Boulders in the Surf, No. 2

Every summer when I was a boy, my parents would take us on vacation to Santa Cruz, California. For a household of boys, there was no place better on earth than Santa Cruz. We divided our time between three great attractions, the pier from which we fished, the beach where we swam and built sand castles, and the boardwalk where we indulged the world of carnival and theme park. The boardwalk was for evenings, and we filled them with rides on the Big Dipper, the Mighty Mouse, and the Log Jam. When we weren't riding the rides, we played games, and most importantly for me, created "spin art."

Nourished on the ambrosia of cotton candy and caramel apples, we made our way to the south end of the boardwalk, to the spin art booth. And here, like the Creator hovering over the primordial darkness and void, we hovered over a chaotic, paint-stained counter eager to create. At each station was a machine to which the operator attached a piece of blank rectangular art paper than spun around so fast it became a blurred circle. Here was our canvas, and there was no need for paintbrushes. Instead, for ten frenzied minutes we squirted streams of paint from plastic bottles onto the spinning paper. We learned to squeeze softer and harder. We learned how to press an awl gently against the spinning paper to inscribe texture and blend the paints.

And when we finished, and only when we finished, the operator would stop the motor that spun the paper. And then for the first time, we would behold the finished artwork sitting still before us. It was our moment of revelation. Then the orange-aproned operator, like a priest reverently raising the Host, would delicately lift your masterpiece from the machine and set it aside to dry before you returned to collect it. Nourished and tired, we proud Picasos toted our artwork back to the Salt Air Court where we transformed our little white motel room into a gallery.

I got hooked on spin art. Perhaps it was largely because I was not yet old enough or tall enough for many of the gut-jumbling rides enjoyed by my older brothers. But there was another reason, the thrill of waiting and not knowing, the thrill of the big surprise at the end. For those ten minutes of squeezing paint on spinning paper, my creative intentions and gestures were taken up by wild centrifugal forces beyond my control to produce something that was at once mine and not mine. All my technique and craft, in the end, were gathered up by the machine and spun wildly into something over which I ultimately had no control. Spin art happened in the unpredictable space between artistic intention and technique, on the one hand, and chance and cosmic forces, on the other. Here was theme park eschatology -- a boy living by artistic faith, confident that beauty would emerge from the tension-filled space between paint applied and paint drying.

It has been over thirty five years since I have made a piece of spin art on the breezy boardwalk by the sea. But just a few weeks ago, I stumbled into it again. Well, sort of. This time it involved no paper, paint, or spinning machine. With camera in tow, I descended the dunes to an isolated stretch of untamed beach along the Pacific coast in California. The beach was scattered with boulders large and small. As the waves of high tide crashed mightily, they tossed the boulders into one another, creating an eerie thunder on a foggy morning.

I chose to make long photographic exposures, slowly recording the water as it rolled unpredictably over and around the boulders.  Once opened, the shutter remained open for many seconds, and what happened during that time was beyond my control. I could anticipate when waves might crash and where water might flow and trip the shutter accordingly, but in the end what happened in those seconds was always unpredictable, surprising, and beyond my control. Sometimes the water foamed unexpectedly as it took its uncharted path around the rocks before beginning its streaky return to the sea. Sometimes incoming waves collided with returning waves and produced watery volcanoes of churning sand.  For those seconds when the shutter was open, the water went where it wanted, when it wanted, in the ways in wanted, and how the camera would record this was equally a mystery. All I could do was trip the shutter, wait, hope, anticipate.

Here was spin art of a higher order.

Here was  a middle-aged man reborn a boy by the briny baptism of the sea.

Here again was the eschatology of creativity, suspending my awareness between present intention and future outcome, between purposeful technique and cosmic surprise.

Here again was the undiluted wonder, potent mystery, and unfettered delight that too often only mystics and children know. And maybe messiahs.

"Let the little children come to me," he said. [1]

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1. Matthew 19.14. New Revised Standard translation.