The Art And Poems Of Sarah Bean

The Old Man And The Sea

2009-11-07T13:06:00.001-08:00

36"x80"
$3200
SOLD

The World Being As It Is, We Dream

2009-11-07T13:05:00.001-08:00

18"x24"
$800

The Illiterate Poet (Collage inspired by the poem of the same name)

2009-11-07T13:03:00.000-08:00

18"x24"
$800

The Knight Of The Sad Face

2009-05-20T13:03:00.000-07:00

30" x 50"
$2000

A Bit Of Earth That Was Hungry, A Lump of Mud That Wept Human Tears

2009-05-20T13:01:00.000-07:00

13" x 40"
$550

Don't You Ever Let A Chance Go By

2009-05-20T13:00:00.001-07:00

20" x 30"
$600.00

One Must Love Life Before Loving Its Meaning

2009-05-20T12:56:00.001-07:00

18" x 24" Collage
$350.00
SOLD

The Happiness Of Beautiful Things

2009-02-22T12:27:00.000-08:00

The Happiness Of Beautiful Things

It rained so hard that
I waited under the low boughs
of a thick tree
and stayed dry until the rain stopped.
Walking home in the street
there was a deluge
and it made my wet clothes too heavy for my body.
The rain pounded and bounced and echoed
so loud I didn't hear the man at first
who pulled up in the pick-up truck.
He stopped to ask me directions
to a road I had never heard of.
Water dripping from the tip of my nose.
He was listening to commercials on the radio.
I waited. He listened to my guesses.
“Are you from around here?”
I didn't know the answer to that question either.
We were on the only road on a small island
easily confused with other nearby islands.

At home I changed into dry corduroys
and made tea and sat in the loft of the barn
watching the rain on the window.
How much nicer it was under the roof
than under the tree.
All the wild things alive I can imagine
are not unhappy in the rain.
Have I ever been wild?
I, who am happiest
in a barn,
on an island
where I cannot find my way?

An Almost Quiet Place

2009-02-22T12:04:00.000-08:00

Letter To An American Friend

2009-02-22T12:02:00.000-08:00

Letter To An American Friend

You said that you imagine I am a little in love with what you called, “coffee-shop intellectualism” and I was wrong to blame you. You correctly noted before that you know only what I have told you about myself. I must have given you that impression through my ineptness at communicating the things that are important to me. Allow me to struggle through an attempt to explain my values a little more clearly.

Coffee-shops are places where people congregate to show off their understanding of the Philosophies of men who have concerned themselves with questions of such magnitudes as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, do I or do I not exist, and most dangerously: here is the proof that nothing we do is of any consequence because everything is relative, God is dead, and we will all end up as soot in the universe’s ashtray one day anyhow. These are some of the playpens and Frankensteins of our Great Western Intellectuals. I have a very clear understanding of the fact that Philosophy and the Intellect have long been used to justify nihilism, mass-murder and the right of the stronger and that they have contributed little of integrity or genuine virtue to justify themselves. I am also aware that there has not been a modern philosopher with the virtue or generosity of Christ, or as much courage as any revolutionary, for how many men of the Western Intellectual Tradition have been willing to die for their ideals? How could I put much stock then in these “coffee-shop intellectuals?” On the contrary they strike me to my core with anger and dread, because I have seen, in history and first hand, how their arrogance has “justified,”-isn’t this the intellectuals blessing?- so many bloody gallows and guillotines. Intellectuals try to be guided by their minds alone and the mind has as its first goal, the subjugation of the soul and the heart. This is the object then of the “coffee-shop intellectual” and it is very far from my own object.

You have mentioned several times to me a deep concern for the immortal and perhaps you have read in my reticence to comment on this subject myself, a disrespect for this kind of spirituality. Perhaps this also informed your picture of me as a disciple of the intellect. I am not so much as skeptical of mysticism or spirituality, but rather I distrust my maturity on the subject. The issue I have with the afterlife as it pertains to man is that it allows for a person to be saved, to meet a divine grace and live in eternal satisfaction and peace, while others are left behind to continue their suffering, their hell on earth. It provides I think, for a selfish sense of entitlement. I am of the belief that you earn what you have paid in suffering on this world. It is therefore impossible I think, for myself or anyone else whose comfort and ease of life comes from the suffering of people in the third world, to consider immortality at all without an arrogance that is incomprehensible. All of us, religious or atheists flush our toilets thoughtlessly with water that is cleaner than what two thirds of the world gives their children to drink. Many of the plastic disposable goods we buy from Asia, are made in the factories that pollute the water supplies there. The sneakers we buy our kids so that they can comfortably play basketball, are made by child slaves in a country not that far away. The corn and coffee that we consume is also produced with labor that is essentially slave labor. How can any conscious person with responsibility for this situation contemplate taking God’s hand? How can we, without a foolish and blind self-righteousness, concern ourselves at all with connecting to God, until we have connected first with the suffering that our ignorance has caused. God doesn’t need you; the resources of your mind, the generosity of your heart, or the unity of your soul. The ancient spirit of human consciousness here on Earth needs those things.

The people who have the heart for a task such as this, almost always lack the discipline of the intelligence, which makes for a sadly inept attempt. People who have labored to sharpen their intelligence too often silence their heart and soul in the process and therefore lose the ambition for virtue and integrity that they were born with. And so I say that anyone who thinks that by laboring hard enough on this earth, they can earn a place in heaven beside God is wrong. My bet is on the fact that if your happiness and your joy has come, as it has, from the ever-increasing suffering of the Third World, than you have not done enough. Not for them and not for God. I have said before, what one has deserved is evident in the greatness which one has suffered, at least until such a time as how one suffers is a product of the decisions one has chosen to make, rather than where one is born.
Please don’t misunderstand me. It is not that I don’t believe in an afterlife, it’s just not a place I think I could ever deserve. It is not a seat I am willing to take. I’d rather stand with those left behind. I hope that, your own beliefs aside, you would agree for the present that it is better for a person to consider with their days how to live virtuously and affect in a meaningful way, the profound suffering of our time, than how to contemplate ones chances at an eternal state of grace.

Our lives in the end, turn out to be rather shorter than we expected they would be, and so it is important for us to decide what it is that we want to achieve with them. Some people decide to earn as much money as possible, so that they can enjoy and give their children the freedom to travel, enjoy leisure, and live anyway they can imagine. Some people decide to spend their lives making the world a more fair and equal place. They raise money for the homeless, help lessen cruelty to animals, and lobby for political reforms. Some people decide to serve God in the hopes of finding peace, well-being, virtue and salvation. Many other people spend their lives essentially learning crafts that improve the quality of our leisure time such as Medicine, Law, Psychology, Culinary, Architecture, Organic Farming, Sports and most of the Fine Arts. They set out to learn these crafts, which they sometimes mislabel as arts, to advance them, and teach them to others. As the crafts are improved and advanced it is necessary, it seems, for the craftsmen to specialize, as there is too much information for anyone to learn all of it.

All of these options of how to spend our short lives seem reasonable or at least understandable to me; and so I ask, what of them is truly the most essential? Which of them am I willing to dedicate my own life to? After much consideration, it seems to me that the only thing which is of truly essential importance is decreasing human suffering on Earth. What did you contribute to ending human suffering? I believe that every person can and must be judged with this as the sole criteria.
I have struggled for sometime with how to apply this criteria to my own life. If you focus on ending starvation by giving people food, but fail to change the system which has forced them into poverty in the first place, then it seems like your efforts have been futile in any lasting or meaningful sense. I have broken the problem down into two parts:

1.) Physical Suffering
Physical suffering is described as war, torture, bondage, starvation, disease and murder. There has never been a time in human history when it would be as easy to solve these problems, to end them if they were an international priority, as it is today. Because of the ease, it must be done, even though this is really only patching the problem rather than solving the bigger problem which is causing the physical suffering in the first place. The best way for an individual to contribute to solving this simple problem is to send large sums of money, at least 5% of your earnings, to one of the few organizations that can efficiently move food, medicine, and liberators to these people. (Two such organizations are OXFAM and Doctors Without Borders.) This sum of money may seem like an impossible burden to the lower middle-class, but if we take the money out monthly from our budgets as though it were a mortgage or a credit debt, and we forgo expenses that we really don’t need, I think we will find that there is enough fat even in the lower middle-class for such a self-imposed tax.

2.) Non- Physical Suffering
Secondly there is Non-Physical Suffering where falls spiritual, emotional, and intellectual suffering. People do not die from Non-Physical Suffering, they kill instead. This is the First-World disease, whereas physical suffering is, with noteworthy exceptions, a Third World Disease. We, as Americans lag behind every other First World Nation in the Charitable Contributions we make and yet we consume more resources and spend more money on consumer goods. We are therefore the Great Oppressors of the world and it is our ignorance, apathy dishonesty and greed that fertilizes and nourishes all forms of physical suffering. Even if we as individuals are opposed to the suffering our nation causes, we reap the benefits and advantages of that suffering in almost every aspect of our comfortable daily lives. But how fortunate we are to be in precisely the right place and at the right time, to change all of this.

What must we do? First, we must, as I mentioned previously, send large sums of money, but this is the easy first step. The second step is much more difficult: we must earn Integrity. We must be honest and look at the crimes and excesses we commit ourselves, before we blame the problems of the world on the opposing political party. This honesty must be able to admit how little we have done up to this point and how little our failures have bothered us. It is a much simpler thing to reform yourself than to try to change others and if you are honest you will see that the actions that separate you from the people that you judge are immeasurably small in any meaningful, concrete way. In addition to honest, we must also be wise. I believe that it is unwise for instance to dedicate money and effort to the issue of abortion-rights. Whether you are pro-choice or pro-life, a wise person would realize that deciding this issue is a luxury that we as a society can afford only after the hundreds of thousands of children that painfully die of starvation in the world, have enough to eat. It would also be wise to lay aside other political issues which are essentially local and which do not effect the profound physical suffering we have mentioned. For instance we should lay aside the issue of equal-employment, marriage, and anti-discrimination laws for homosexuals until we make it illegal for them to be imprisoned, tortured and murdered in other parts of the world. We should demand that our government grant asylum rights to people in danger, before we worry about their insurance benefits. Wisdom, at least in part, is the ability to make very difficult decisions about what should have priority over something else. I believe that murder, torture, war, bondage, starvation and disease should have priority above everything else.

In addition to honesty and wisdom, we must also seek to acquire for ourselves a sense of justice, generosity, and intelligence. Justice will help us to see what we posses in our lives which we have no right to, it will help us to let go of our excesses and give the materials of them to people more deserving. It will help us to weigh what we take from the world against what we have given. If we acquire generosity, it will bring us joy to give away the things in our lives which we cherish, to people for whom it may make a difference between survival and a painful death. Intelligence we must acquire so that we will not be fooled by a false victory or sense of accomplishment. Intelligence helps us to know what must be done and how it must be done; it provides our heart with the fire and justification to push forward.

Finally we must find physical strength and courage, not so that we may be soldiers and fight a righteous war, but so that we can be heros and defend those who are too weak and oppressed to stand or survive without our defense. It is wrong for people to condemn all war, especially for people such as ourselves who have never had to hide our children in attics, or watch our neighbors kidnaped by vicious soldiers in the night. It is wrong to condemn defending innocent people when they are begging for help, just as it is wrong not to defend a child from an abuser.
It is in this way that I believe we must act, if we are ever to change anything meaningful, if we are ever to effect the horrible condition of suffering in the world. People often talk about pursuing a oneness with God, or with the earth, or sometimes with The Collective Unconscious of the Universe. I do not yet see the fault of abandoning these abstractions which cannot be simply explained and strive for the course of oneness with a divinely human integrity made from the best fibers contributed from our hearts our minds and our souls, which for themselves whisper this demand silently every day of our lives.

-S.A.B

Letter To a Young Artist

2009-02-22T12:01:00.000-08:00

To my little friend:

I’ve been sitting in the living room table thinking of you for a while, just smoking cloves and wishing that you were here. I imagine us playing a game, just you and myself and a bottle of tequila. You’d ask me a question, anything you wanted to ask about my dreams or my life or my ghosts. I’d take a shot and answer your question, then ask you one of my own. You’d take a shot and answer, on and on until we were drunk and laughing or crying or both.

Sometimes I feel as though I know nothing more about you than that somehow we are very similar to one another. A kind of god or devil which runs in the blood of both of us, which I don’t see in anyone else. I think you must love other people with a passion they can never seem to understand, though you always think they do. I think there is a destructive fury in you that makes you feel peaceful and relaxed and that loneliness is a feeling you find hard to bear, but that you never want to lose. I think you crave to be cradled in the arms of one who does not exist in this world. That you want to be understood, but never explained. I think you are exhausted of running away from something that has hunted you for as long as you can remember.
If these things seem true then I believe we are neighbors on that dark planet you find yourself on when there is no one else around. Will it make your days better to know that you are not alone? Will it help you to find more things in this world to treasure? I don’t think it will, but there are things I haven’t said to you which must be said:

I care as much for you as I have for the closest friends in my life and this love will never be diminished by anything careless or destructive you’ll ever do. There are no rules you must follow. No expectations you must meet. You can relax in our friendship, it will always be there. And if you ever find yourself wanting to say things you may not believe in tomorrow, I’ll still listen, and if you want to scream at someone who won't think you’re insane, I am here. If you just want to sit without saying anything at all for a few hours, I won’t walk away.

The other night when you were home you had a three course pasta dinner with ice cream and a pint of bourbon chaser on the floor in the kitchen. I know because all the food was still in the pots on the floor when I woke up. Most people in your life have probably worried about how much you drink, but I’m not worried at all. I know that those are the nights when the devil who chases you has gained a little ground and you’re scared. It doesn’t worry me and it doesn’t anger me. I haven’t been there, where you are, but I’ve been to places like it.

What would worry me is if you gave up your race and your fear and your anger and decided to settle for happiness, a mundane happiness that is not earned but is decided upon. The advice I can offer you, as a person who has found temporary peace, is don’t ever be pleased with this world which robs you of your youth and your joy without giving anything back. Don’t ever make friends with happiness as it is an accomplice to boredom and old age, but also do not fight against joy, don’t confuse it with happiness. Joy is that feeling that overcomes you when you connect with another human being, or when your freedom inspires you to do something that makes sense. Joy comes with a sense of accomplishment or understanding or honesty. Joy is something you must embrace when it comes, though you know that it cannot last. Record it and remember it and relive it anytime you feel like it.

One last thing: You may not consider yourself a painter or a writer or an actress or a musician or anything, but don’t let that confuse you. You are definitely an artist in the purest sense of that word. There is a pressure in you, which will build and build until it destroys you and I am not exaggerating. The only way to relieve that pressure is to create. Create anything. Paint, write, whatever, and destroy it if you wish, but you must build a tunnel from yourself to something else to get that pressure out. Learning wont do it, traveling wont do it, they’ll only temporarily appease you.

You are one who was born to create, a rare disease I think, but it most certainly yours.

All my Love,
Sb

People Without Language

2009-02-22T11:41:00.000-08:00

PEOPLE WITHOUT LANGUAGE

For R. Slater

Is it too little to say
that it is because we don’t know how to live well?
That the ones who should have shown us
stayed behind,
in the old country.

Who were the ones that turned their backs
on village opera houses,
and street markets,
for the New World?
For trees that cannot converse?
Here among the apple orchards,
black flies,
and Indian Burial Grounds,
you may kneel for as long as you like.
Burn witches, change your name, own men as livestock.
Here they let us pay on credit.
Told us we can, “Take care of it down the road.”
I wonder if anyone has figured the price?

Americans followed the Italian Renaissance
by perfecting campfire songs and Boy Scouting.
.
Rushing to California to stumble on Gold
during the European Enlightenment.

Cowboys and Indians,
Elvis and Hollywood,
Handguns and Billy Graham.
America could not be itself
if its people could measure
the weight of History,
Civilization,
Language.
Isn’t it more than ocean and dirt that separates Hawthorne from Dostoevsky?

Mine is a society raised by outcasts,
born on prairies, in swamps and cornfields,
upon mountain tops, and icy granite islands.
You could not see a neighbors house.

Who is surprised that we lack a sense of humor?
That we carry guns and pill bottles
and have neither a history
or a language
to explain ourselves in.
We do not have a language in which to question our leaders.
A language to organize neither dinner parties nor revolutions.

We have no language to love in,
an old face looking through a nursing home window.
We have no language to love in,
the father who enjoys his long commute.
We have no language to love in,
the mother who hasn’t had a close friend since high school.
We have no language to love in,
the daughter who wishes she could live in a book.
We have no language to love in,
the son who want’s everyone to think like himself.

And so we live,
generation to wounded generation
in the manner that all
carnivores without language
have lived.

Across This Distance (I am with you)

2009-02-21T13:32:00.000-08:00

Across This Distance I am With You
13"x 40"
$550
Sold

2009-02-21T13:19:00.001-08:00

The Fall Of Icarus

2009-02-21T13:06:00.000-08:00

The Fall Of Icarus

"Oh Icarus, you flew so high that your every perception of the world was lost."

Icarus was a famous Greek Boy. His father was an inventor and made for them a pair of wings from feathers and wax. Despite his father's warnings, Icarus grew over confident and flew too close to the sun. He believed that he was unconquerable. The wax melted and he crashed to his death. This myth has been passed down through our civilization since at least 2000 B.C.

20" x 30"
$720
SOLD

Three Short Poems

2009-02-21T13:00:00.001-08:00

1.

If I knew what art was
I would say
Today you are in this world
Among six billion strangers
And 60 centuries of history
And 24,000 miles in any direction
And tomorrow you are dust
Art is how we try to understand this.

2.

To love a friend in this world
who enjoys silence
who believes without preaching
who finds beauty among strangers
To find freedom so near simplicity
To love a friend in this world.

3.
Blinded by a nearness to injustice
I seek equity to the point of mediocrity
My back turned on beauty,
I look for righteousness.
And the universe is a plastic set for my disaster.
What can I do and what can I change
If I fail to wonder at anything
Other than myself?

Sarah A Bean

Crimson and Gold

2009-02-21T12:56:00.000-08:00

Crimson and Gold

Every Fall we have left the city
On the second weekend in October
To drive through the mountains
And admire the foliage
Every year together for twenty years
It is something we have shared
When our children were not interested
When we were young and had to rent the car
I have never really asked you why we go
I have simply said:
“Shall we go to the mountains next weekend?”
And you have said,
“I would be nice.”

This year our country fights a silent war
That some people claim is complicated
And some people claim is simple
In the car this weekend I wonder again
At the crimson and gold leaves.
Aglow with the Promethian blazes of rebellion
Leaves greet their end with resplendent refusal.
As they fall, if they could speak
would we still want to be here?

“But they are only leaves” you say
Yes, and when it is our time to fall,
Will our rebellion sound as brave
As their silence?

Sarah A Bean

Language Cannot Do Everything

2009-02-21T12:54:00.000-08:00

Language Cannot Do Everything
24"x36"
$720

The Storm

2009-02-21T12:27:00.001-08:00

The Storm

The thunder carries on growing louder
and then louder still.
I imagine it cannot get louder
that it must begin to retreat
but louder still it comes,
until it stops.
Clearly, abruptly.

My body in terror wonders if it
is possibly now too loud to hear,
too close to feel.
My heart in terror recognizes a familiar question:
How can something which commands the world
cease to exist so suddenly?

Sarah A Bean

2009-02-21T12:22:00.000-08:00

Exhaust The Limits Of The Possible

"Oh my soul, do not yearn for eternal life,
but exhaust the limits of the possible" -Pindar

20x30
$600
SOLD

2009-02-21T12:17:00.000-08:00

Evolution Of A Youth

11" x 14"
$120

The Illiterate Poet

2009-02-21T12:15:00.000-08:00

The Illiterate Poet

What do you call a poet
who is unable to read
and unable to speak?

I see the world around me
in black and white mesotints
that cheat just slightly by moving.
Rain dripping from wide tree leaves,
sleeping chests heaving as they breathe,
dark alleys through which fog steals.
Quiet pictures strike me.
My body surges with emotion,
my world is a heat index map
violent colors in chaotic patterns
which shift like clouds.
A mass moving together,
an ensemble fighting to form an individuality
pulling apart until it all fades away.

In that part of myself where dreams are formed,
I awake to narrate stories to myself
in gestures instead of words.
I live as though I do not know what words are for.
Like using words to communicate with
is a restriction I simply
will not work with.

Sarah A.Bean

The Story of Baucis and Philemon

2009-02-21T12:11:00.000-08:00

The Story Of Baucis and Philemon
24” x 36”
The writing in the piece is the following poem:
“Instead of heaven after we are gone
Let us become giant trees twisted together.
Standing braided within your arms for centuries
I would like to try and see if I could get enough of you.”
-Sarah.A. Bean
Baucis and Philemon were characters in Greek Mythology. The were a poor older couple, whom the gods visited in disguise. They gave the gods all the food and wine they had, though they were only simple strangers to them. As a reward they were granted a wish. Baucis and Philemon wished that they would die at the same time. They lived long lives and at their death they were turned into trees that twisted together.

$1200.
SOLD

The Cafe

2009-02-21T12:10:00.000-08:00

The Cafe

It is raining hard outside
The Cafe is closing, though I have just sat down.
My Cafe Au Lait is too hot to drink.
The staff is closing the gates
and quickly wiping the tables.
Putting milk in the refrigerator,
they are banging metal things
almost frantic to close up.
Soon they will begin to stack the chairs around us.
There is only one other customer
in the cafe with me,
enjoying the very last moments
before they ask us to leave.
He is thin and very dirty
and I believe his mug has been
empty for a long time.

This poem is not about banging metal and wasted coffee.
It's about trying to sleep through the night with your face in the rain.

2009-02-21T11:07:00.000-08:00

Artist Statement

Art is my university education. It is a way for me to study the time and world that I live in. I write poetry from solid ground with a clear voice; the collage element is where I work my ideas into clarity with experimentation, questioning and guesses. The challenge of poetry and collage are the same: elaborate a richness for the soul from a simple form, suppressing everything that is useless.

I come to collage by way of training in mathematics and physics, a passion for music, a friendship with literature, and a commitment to philosophy. These interests have a tendency to pull the imagination into different directions, in collage however, I have found a format in which these fields of interest can work together to speak for me.

In this body of work I am focused on creating a harmony between discordant ideas such as calm and movement, straight and curved, odd and even, limited and unlimited, nature and science, unity and multiplicity, dark and light. I use classical and modern cubistic forms which have defined the aesthetics of western culture and I combine them with a version of Chinese storytelling in which the written word is formed into visual art. Many of the poems and photographs are my own. For subjects I choose things which are fragile, but also impossible to destroy. Fragile because they are quiet, private moments which are easily missed in our loud, busy lives. Impossible to destroy, because these sublime moments of clarity have existed since the beginning of time.

Art is a way for us to seek what moves us. For me, it is things of simplicity and authenticity. Stories that have an effect of dignity and elevation. I seek subjects which are impossible to explain, I hold them close to me, observe them and make art from the atmosphere that they create. Seek what moves you. Between the one who creates a work of art and the one who loves it, there is a shared nature and an intimate, silent understanding. I think it is perhaps the highest form of living, when we can reach it.