Art on Capitol Hill

Art? There are creative fires within each of us which, if allowed to burn, can lift us beyond the temporal—can let us fly. Maybe not on the first try, but even the first attempts, the first little leaps, are wonderful. Art is for all of us. Mankind has been endowed with the power to grasp and express ideas through language, music and art. But, like the other two, art is too often under-valued. The mysterious gift of creativity is so universally human that we squander it on the mundane, the invention of conveniences.

But look again. It is through the sheer joy of creating, sharing and looking at images of the universal human experience that a pure understanding of beauty, emotion and ideas can be reached. Take color. Put yourself back in time. Let’s say you are the first living being to see color as simply color, not as food or camouflage, but as the dazzling dance of light that gives us a pure emotion. Just think of the jump, the enormous leap of the spirit from a mere captive of biology to another dimension. This is how to look at color everyday in everything around you. You can cherish color because you have inherited a mind—the most precious gift ever bestowed. It is the capacity to revere something other than genetic survival that makes us human, not all the clever ways we have invented to be comfortable.

Now imagine yourself the first person to draw something in the dirt--with your finger, a stick, anything. Your hand becomes your mind. It is thinking. It is pulling visual thoughts from somewhere deep inside and fashioning the symbols of a parallel reality. It is magic. It is a thought process so far beyond the biological that the reason for it teases us even today. This is art…the visual language of values that gives life to experience. Every time we deliberately use or see this gift we refer to so casually as the “visual arts” we are lifted into the truly human realm.

What you notice first are the visual rhythms. Forms move and colors jump. Light rises from bottom to top and touches each shape as it dances to the painted music. Keep looking and you begin to see things you recognize…a chair or a vase. Maybe several of them. Look some more and you see whatever you want to see.

You are looking at a painting by Tati Kaupp, an artist who lives on The Hill. She grew up here. She went to the Capitol Hill Day School and the many glorious art museums within minutes of her home—grand buildings with so much great art that most people find them either overwhelming or boring. She didn’t. What few people know is that Tati was born in Mexico and spent her awakening years exploring remote villages with mother, Kitty and father, Robert. The sheer happiness found in color and the primitive yet sophisticated images were captured in the enormity of a child’s imagination. Totems playing in sun-filled universes dominate Tati’s early work. The characters are as free of identity as they are free to become whatever form, shape or idea they choose.

Tati went to Skidmore College, in Saratoga Springs, NY, for a degree in art and later did graduate work at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. The spirit world was joined by theoretical and technical knowledge and it continues to dance on, as before, in search only of the next dance. Tati’s work can be seen in homes all over the Hill and in such public places as the offices in 660 Pennsylvania Ave., and Eastern Market Title. You can find both small and major paintings, and ceramics, for sale at Gallery325, at 325 7th Street SE, and Tati can be found online at www.tati414.com. Gallery News

Art galleries are not simply businesses. Or at least they shouldn’t be. They should be protective coves—safe places out of the rapid and sometimes vicious currents of daily life. You slide your mind into a visual eddy and let it float for a while. One such safe haven has left the area after four years at 660 Pennsylvania Avenue. Taylor and Sons Fine Arts closed its doors in mid-February. Artists Michele Taylor and Andrei Kushnir have reopened in Ellicott City, Maryland, near Baltimore. Popular artists Jack Hannula and Carol Spils and others will continue to hang at Gallery325, around the corner on 7th Street. Taylor and Sons will be missed. Like a park, an art gallery gives value to a community far beyond its taxable potential. As an economist would put it, benefits accrue in the nature of a public good. In other words, a gallery is good for the community. It makes it better. Good luck, Michele, and thanks for making Capitol Hill a better place.

This is the first of a series on art and artist on Capitol Hill by artist and teacher Jim Magner. His art can be viewed at Gallery 325, 325 7th St. SE.