Thursday, December 23, 2010

Dream House

by Drew Martin

Perhaps I stared too long at the eclipse the other night but I have been having very pronounced, visual dreams since then. It's lunacy: I never dream about art. Usually I dream about discovering places: endless caverns under houses and whole new sections of cities I already know like the back of my hand.

Two nights ago I dreamt I was watching a performance artist, Damaris Drummond, make a video out in nature, which she had painted over; every leaf...even the ground, so it appeared to be a set. The effect was quite remarkable.

Last night I had a bizarre dream. I was hiking with my ten year old son's scout pack in the woods and we happened upon and got directions from a handful of older, bronzed Swedish nudists vacationing in the woods, where they had their little datjas.

The fathers of the scouts went to some kind of lodge, more like a long-house, and sat on the floor, propped up against opposing walls and started playing a betting game, sans cards, by gesturing their arms and placing $5 bids. I get queasy around gambling so I got up and went to look for my son. I found him in a very clean and modern cabin: airy and bright.

He and one of his buddies were putting finishing touches on a huge, square canvas they whipped up and decided to paint in a couple minutes. It was intriguing: two black, overlapping outline drawings of life-size figures with washes of mainly blues and other pastel colors over everything. I was simultaneously studying the painting and ringing out and hanging up laundry on a slack line about a claw-foot tub in the same room. Some mothers called from outside, where the was a sunny, grassy opening in the woods. We all left and returned to the trail to walk home.

I sketched the composition (above) when I woke up from the dream in the middle of the night...but the figures in the dream painting were much more realistic.