Birth

1.

In the beginning,

born out of the emptiness

of dust and red dirt ,

Kukaniloku appears at 4AM

like an oasis

reinforced through the reverence

of royal births for centuries

the energy of extreme duress

focused and juxtaposed

to the serenity of natural forms.

Breathing in and out

of a circular grove,

the nocturnal breeze

animates the eucalyptus trees

as it always has.

Bearing witness

to what remains conduit,

initiating internally,

the way scent

is directly linked to memory .

The tingling of the fingers,

as it feels for release,

pushing hands with the silence.

The sequence of stones,

smooth and inanimate,

rise from verdant fields.

A woman’s profile,

in the latest stage of hapai,

her dark ridges swollen on the horizon

soon giving birth to the sky.

Deep within the

island’s center,

far from our gaze

comes the cries of strays

feral cats, wandering roosters

those sheltering under tent flaps

sound off and give way

as the last gasp of night

turns into day.

2.

In the recesses of

disassembled words,

from out of the rubble

where art is born

and trauma is transformed,

comes the point of release,

and the gradual changes,

no longer fully dark

but understood by degrees.

In the east

light fills in the cracks

like a paint that is applied

to father sky’s canvas,

the first rays of insight.

From the understaining

comes a vision, manifesting in

patchwork images and plucked lichen

that through the sea mist

stressed photosynthesis

changes color

on maritime gravestones.

It textures the illumination

beneath track lights and

on subterranean walls

the picture becomes clearer ;

a verdant field, a pastoral scene

as you step away.

3.

The Cape

was on the edge of

the distant past.

Absorbed in the fog,

disappearing into the landscape

of wood and bog

wandering like a coyote

past Chatham light at dawn.

Beyond the last clapboard cottage,

our eyes meet

as they did across the fire

in the earthen structure of the Wetu.

Wooden benches

facing each other

and in that space you imagine

all that came before, those

surviving in the face of nature.

There was no separation,

until one day we’re scattered

and the gatherings fewer.

Greater is the distance traveled

to celebrate birthdays and origins,

a mother a grandmother,

the sun which warms us

and from whom all have grown

to appreciate each passing moment.

Each time the light is

a deeper hue of gold

as it begins its descent through windows

until absorbed into the sea

and in our eyes

verdant fields grow darker

and this cycle replenishes endlessly

the sense of collective identity

on the edges and in the spaces

where most things

begin and end.

Bottom image is the painting entitled “Ispica 6” by Dominick Takis Sr.

acrylic oil lichen sprayfoam branch media in silicone caulking on canvas.

To view more of his art please refer to this website:

https://dominicktakis.com/

Making a Painting of Memory

To process the unavoidable

in the best spirit possible,

in light of all that cannot be

so easily let go.

Childhood landmarks

for so long enclosed and tended,

like a terraced garden

in the yard that grows smaller

as you grow older

and the outside world leans closer and closer.

The oak trees that stood watch and held hawks,

were helplessly felled by the years to come.

Will there be any left to land

when houses pass hands

and open space becomes a commodity?

Progress fails to mention the casualties

of feathers and roots beneath tire marks

when expansion becomes Walmarts

on the outskirts of bulldozer scars.

What will become of our own shangri-la?

In my mind undisturbed,

the backdrop of table and rock stack

forms the rough hewn first layer of the terrace,

preserved there in this parallel existence,

weighted against the swirling impermanence

that moves in like a storm.

In years to come who will sit on the porch

just to smell the rain,

relieved that the parched earth will drink again?

Will subsequent visits find the inevitable weeds and overgrown grass

where dahlias once passed summers between the fences?

Will they still enclose all of the references

when obscured by ivy and choked with vine?

All the memories like scattered leaves

that the wind interweaves with the present,

gather at the base of the hill in a sodden pile

with no one to reconcile.

There remains some vivid colors.

My grandfather in his red sweater

that matches his glass of wine,

sitting beneath caps,

with hands folded permanently at that table in time.

Where are the kids of the neighborhood,

who made strongholds of foundations

and built forts by the old pine?

Who climbed fences with ease,

knowing every inch of these quarters.

They probably have their own sons and daughters,

strung out on screens,

did they sacrifice their sense of adventure

to growing older in the American dream?

I listen for the voices of kids playing outside.

Will there be any left to call in by streetlight?

Any dog racing up the hill first freed from the leash?

Whatever light is left can only emphasize

the emptiness of dead end streets,

shadows filling in the contours of rooms

where once paintings lined walls

to distinguish the decades,

extinguished as darkness falls.

I can still hear the sound of our footsteps on the creaking stair,

the cacophony of our lives behind the walls of Evelyn,

where our voices and movements have settled in

like a barely audible whisper beneath the passage of time.

I can still make a painting of memory

to temper my mind

into distinguishing all these changes

from what will endure.

Waving Idly From Afar

Like the wind

I work my way through the tall grass of the crater.

A place of rare emergence, it is named for ‘ihi ihilauakea’

who between drought and flood

sleeps under the hardened mud

and in the languid shade

dreams are draped like a clover lei

in this dry and wordless place.

The thorny brush scrapes the canvass,

its rhythmic sway

is the sea that lifts a finger

to paint and texture the horizon far away.

Like the path

I am worn by generations of footsteps.

Boots dusty from the factory

contrasting starkly

with the starched white wedding tunic

fitting like a luminous shell

dropped from  greater heights

to speak of sacrifice

and the miracle of being alive,

within the crevices of myriad choice,

a clinging crustacean

against the immensity of waves

drowning out the tiny voice.

Words were meant to be an offering

but the sky makes short work of my ambition

as spray begets beads on lava rock,

more sweat is necessary.

I lift my eyes to read

the careless cursive in a pattern of birds.

Cryptic signs from those lost at sea

come to me at dawn.

My makeshift empathy

is tattered by the wind

but still waving a thin, forgotten banner

faded with time.

Best to replace messages with rhyme

flagpoles with fishing line,

to see what can be drawn from the deep

instead of waving idly from afar.

I couldn’t claim any of this as my own,

elusive silhouette against the sky,

paper cutout to the hillside,

raised shade in the veil of clouds

just passing by.

I did not obstruct the wind

but lent an animated note

to its continuous hymn.

I did not construct the unknown

but bent my craft to its every whim

before letting go.

Symbiosis

.

DOMINICK TAKIS:  Symbiosis:  Sicilian, Irish and Other Travel Interpretations with Lichen

Symbiosis:  A close prolonged association between two or more different organisms of different species that may benefit each member. 

When I began to incorporate lichen onto my surfaces as a weight and balance for composition, I was mostly interested in it’s textures and patterns.  Lichen has an ancient and weathered look; it makes me think of civilizations that revered the circle as a symbol of the connection between the harmony of nature and the cosmos. The patterns of the lichen appeared on man-made Dolmens and portal tombs as well as naturally on stone. 

I began to read more about lichen and it’s symbiotic relationship to algae; how they create their own existence, yet are attached.  I found parallels in my own life; the distance that comes from independence, yet still remaining attached to my ancestors and culture. An outcropping of land, a farmhouse, a church or a graveyard may take on greater significance when it contains some familial connection.  This became apparent when traveling through my ancestral Sicily and in my wife’s native Ireland.  Whether drawing inspiration from the Cathedral mosaics in Monreale or through the neolithic stone of Drombeg, this work resonates with a desire to come full circle.  What began as physically traveling back to the land, has left an impression, influencing my work’s narrative.  Whether figuratively or intellectually, I have recognized this symbiotic relationship with my ancestors and culture and how it informs my art.

I recently collaborated with my father (who is a painter and mixed media artist) on this statement for his most recent work that will be shown in the Galatea Gallery in Boston during the month of June 2015

The Opening reception is 6-8Pm on Friday June 5th,  feel free to stop by if you are in the area.

Galatea Gallery   http://galateafineart.com/

Address: 460 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118

Phone:(617) 542-1500

What is Completed?

The interpretation of art,

like a rebirth of thought.

Each new piece regenerates

all that came before it.

It venerates the ancestor

of no definitive answer,

instead coloring and giving birth

to an infinite texture.

Contours you’ll resume

by tracing this womb throughout.

It begins by lightly brushing the surface,

as graceful as a lizard’s limbs

over the coarse skin of tree bark.

The canvass stretched taut,

silent and thin as a moth’s wings

deafening when you’re listening

to a certain frequency of rain,

it resonates like a train of thought,

seismic as a teardrop in a pool,

radiating in myriad directions.

Each stroke is an impression,

passing over the surface like an apparition,

tuned into the unseen,

its lingering reception recalling

all those things that stay with you.

Each step is an embryo

for new material to come through

the subconscious,

no longer dormant

but with a slow flow

as if emerging from a volcano,

the vaporous past absorbed into the current,

transformed from within,

to be reborn as new land

calling into question

as you perceive from the edge

“What is ever fully completed?”

Subterranean Markings

Watercolors in the human weathering

The luxuriant wetness of selves disintegrating

The cellar paint dissolving into a new wave

The sound of music fills the subterranean cave.

Dripping, drawing patterns on the walls.

Vast collections of familiar discord,

childhood recollections,

various associations of punishment and reward

soon lower their coffins under the floor boards.

The memories house

the Bauhaus

a soundtrack to the first time you sensed fear,

it attacked your senses with a lid shutting kind of creaking,

<releasing a chill down the spine.

You didn’t realize at the time

the significance of this feeling.

Fingers roam cool porcelain

the ceiling

another layer of skin

to gaze at everything

through the mosaic past.

 

It starts with a flash

a moving flesh of light

shapes surface with the parting aperture

see-through windows

that watch the other blur

into a double exposure.

The vague trace of these markings

linger under the branches

of the banyan veranda.

Scents linked to memory

form faces

rooted in nostalgia.

All the expressions made of tears

pulled apart as opposed to crying

like the Velvets with colors

running through disparate images

appearing as fodder

to the interpretor

of the endlessly turning

large screen projector.

Going backwards through the frames

through portals and parallels

the process remains the same.

The self tries to relate to the whole

subject to paradox

reason obscuring the goal

like fog in a forest

and you’re lost again and again.

A film over the eyes strained

to work thin sheets

stained by abstraction

absorbing the experience

though it lacks protection

from obsession

from cracks that fracture the dream

unbound manuscripts of wind

scattering the scene

you were taught to repeat

again and again.

From the roots you unfold scrolls

in the sleepy knolls of an idle mind.

It controlls the reels and the fiction.

With vast strokes

it creates worlds by hand

words that mime

the sound of the ocean

courting the sand of the shoreline.

Silhouettes of residual spray

break apart

in the ecstacy of its art.

That which is never fully attained,

captured nor explained,

motions to bear witness

to the most transient of masterpieces.

 

A Stitch in the Night

Trapped together on this island

under this canopy of light

a stitch in the night of ripped denim

interlocking coils of rain

unfolding from our will

never static, stagnant nor predictable

it’ll give us only distance

residue on the next morning

tears from the ceiling we’ve constructed

without the strength to hold it back.

Pools offer glimpses of the sky’s infinity

the energy expressed in mist

cloaked in myth

the shadows that hug the cliff

are too temporal to leave symbols.

Cave lapses, I’ve been here before,

on another coast, along another shore.

There was another shade

another penetrating wave

while foam cascades

over another glistening throne.

Each moment

like one great gasp of a white-capped wave

pounding infinite fragmentary diamonds

upon the waiting pockets of the earthen fold.

The Point, the surf, the sky-reflected shore,

the hazy drastic horizon’s blur

the child’s fantastic dreams

laying there condemned to water

the ocean slowly encroaching

this half-formed crustacean.

I’ll take you in, then set you free again.

Tides are endless creamy seas,

great white horse-driven waves going static

in their asylum of broken whispers,

nocturnal emissions I pray I’ll always hear.