360-357-2850
Olympia, WA
YOU'RE INVITED
I’ve been invited to read poetry for the Olympia Poetry Network, as their featured reader for February. MARK YOUR CALENDAR February 20, 2019 - 7pm Traditions Fair Trade Cafe 5th and Water Street downtown Olympia
I already have some requests and will be reading new poems along with old favorites. Here’s a new one I’ve been working on.
JOB DESCRIPTION FOR A POET
We need scouts, just a few. The job requires a willingness to live rough in wilderness, and make your own way. We can supply a few tools and a vague idea of where we want to go. The country is unknown. Others have gone in; most have not returned. There are wild animals. Some are dangerous. We’ll be behind, widening your trail, building outposts and the foundations for towns. We will no doubt wonder why you blazed the trail where you did, but we can’t know what you’ll come up against. We’ll count on you. Do your best. With luck We’ll find you at rest by the fabled sea. -Don Freas
Learn more about the Olympia Poetry Network.
1/3/2019 Back to Simple
There are several threads that weave through them all. Rings, of course, but also a ritual, exploratory process that put me in collaboration with the materials and fabrication in a quest to discover (and be surprised by) the eventual form.
As the process evolved they became more complex and dense, varying from complete chaos to ideas of order, from an assembly of iterations of one element to a complex that involved five or six different shapes, and from fourteen elements overall to too many to count. Each of the final pieces has its grace and strengths; they each exist as individuals and as generations of kin—as dependent on one another as they are each freed from those that came before. Looking Back When ten were complete I looked back to the original, the great grandmother of them all, and wondered what it was that I found so singularly compelling about that first. Besides the pure clarity of being the first, I realized it was also the most simple.
It had the fewest parts, as well as the fewest rules of engagement. These details give it an open, uncomplicated stance I appreciate. Simplicity is its strength. Over the next few weeks the idea for the ultimate Ring Dance, #11, took form.
11/10/2018 The Poetry of Sculpture
Initiation, View No1, wood, leather cord, 22” x 16” x 13”, $1800
The piece called “Initiation” began with wonder and a pile of black walnut scraps. I glued them together on a curve, then faired the faces and edges smooth. That gave me an intriguing form I hadn’t imagined at the outset. It reminded me of a piece of body armor, protection for the left half of the chest.
To know who we truly are we have to become vulnerable, exposing our inner world.
|
Highlighted My sculpture “To Hold” was highlighted by the rising sun this morning. I went over to focus close on the figures, perched and teetering in their joint struggle. |  |
Holding On
Their struggle is mythological: they pull against forces they can’t see or comprehend. Holding on to one another and to those mysterious cords that descend into the underworld stabilizes them.
There is a sense that neither could do it alone, but what they combine their forces against remains a mystery. They can theorize but they better not let go, or so it seems.
There is a sense that neither could do it alone, but what they combine their forces against remains a mystery. They can theorize but they better not let go, or so it seems.
Outside / Inside The figures read as female and male, but that’s a metaphor, a representation of the active penetrative outward aspect, and the receptive introspective inward aspect that balances within each of us, regardless of gender. In this case the active half is all-in, heroically pulling against a world-machine that pulls back, while the introspective half is just becoming aware that maybe they are only pulling against themselves. Reminds me to watch for such tension in myself today—and to appreciate the always moving sunlight. |  To Hold |
1/6/2017
Tree Guards
City of Olympia Dedication
The City of Olympia will host a dedication for the Westside Olympia Sculptural Tree Guards—Monday January 9 at 2:30 pm.
My designs for the tree guards were accepted by the City of Olympia in 2008 when I still lived in Westside. Thanks to Stephanie Johnson's (Olympia Art, Parks and Recreation) persistent persuit of funding, they were fabricated in the summer of 2016 by the inmate training program at Walla Walla State Penitentiary. They're sculptural and intended as bike racks. |
1/4/2017
Poetry and Music
Closing Time Performance
Salon Refu, Susan Christian’s gallery and event space in Olympia is hosting another series of closing-time intimate readings and performances this January. They were so well received (and so much fun) in December that the gallery didn’t want to stop.
Father and Daughter
This time I’ll read a few poems and my daughter Erica Freas will sing a few of her amazing songs. We’ve been wanting to do this together for a long time. We hope you can join us.
6/13/2016
It takes a tribe…
| Last Thursday, June 9th, was moving day for my Culture/ Ring Dance #10 that was on display for the City of Olympia Percival Plinth Project. The sculpture has been holding court on the back stretch of the landing since last July. With help from the kids, we brought it home. Stephanie Johnson of Olympia's Parks, Arts & Rec Department was on site to help uninstall the work. … |   |
6/13/2016
American Craft – In Olympia
The New Teamwork
How We Work Together Now
June/July 2016
How We Work Together Now
June/July 2016
| I was surprised to see a reference to my sculpture in the June/July 2016 issue of American Craft magazine (page 86). The sculpture they covered just came home from the Percival Landing site two weeks ago, but you can see it here at the Refuge. |  Click image to view online |
12/1/2015
Around the World
When I was a kid…
When I was a kid I remember thinking that if I had a skyhook that reached high enough I could just grab on and let the earth turn under me, then set down at another longitude thousands of miles away. It seemed so simple; I could go around the world in twenty-four hours.
More recently…
More recently I noticed that everything feels a lot more calm when I recognize that I’m holding still and everything else is moving around me. Even when I’m driving or flying, there can be a stately calm in knowing the world is pouring by, under over and beside my resting position.
It's a good thing…
It’s a good thing I became a poet and sculptor rather than an engineer—so much more is possible.
A gift idea for the season…
6/23/2015
Two Nights and the Day Between
Waiting for the Curtain
| I had the announcement for Swallowing the World all ready to go, but decided to wait for the new moon to launch it. It was just a day and a half away, on a Tuesday. In agriculture (as in everything else) superstitions develop. An old one says for best results plant on the waxing moon. The book was already available on Amazon, but I hadn’t told anyone. Why not wait to “plant” awareness until after that new moon? The unforeseen value of that decision was that suddenly nothing had to be done. A pause rolled in, an unplanned reflective retreat—two nights and the day between. I had nothing more to do and no one was asking any questions about it. I could knock around, tinker, and wonder. The moment reminded me of one of my older poems. I could remember the feel, and a few lines, but I couldn’t remember the title: Deep breaths, relaxed and alert,/ the work approaching, the deluge--/or is it already complete? Are we finished--/simply waiting for the curtain,/ for what has been stored in potential/ to play out in release? | That’s the feeling I remembered. I’m tempted to call it “imminence” but it might more accurately be “immanence.” |
In this case…
The day of waiting for the book to be announced led me to find the poem I was thinking of—and then to wonder why it wasn’t in the book. That led to one of those familiar creative dilemmas in which I questioned why other poems were in the book. Which led to the recognition that it’s all exactly as it should be. Let’s see what happens.
The unpublished poem is called “Way of Being.”
The unpublished poem is called “Way of Being.”
Way of Being
The way thunder tumbles,
a train coming on a warm evening
carrying heavy rain:
with shelter near we languish, nuzzling
the luxury of all that fluid change--
at hand, but not on us yet.
Deep breaths, relaxed and alert,
the work approaching, the deluge--
or is it already complete? Are we finished--
simply waiting for the curtain,
for what has been stored in potential
to play out in release?
Anchor cut, the ship
moves—suspended between
its own power and that of the sea--
into the realm of wind shifts
and rogue waves; the barrier between
life and death more porous. Tears
beginning, live emotion, the thrill
of grief as reptile-brain recalls
all the ways of destruction
as near at hand as those of salvation.
And yet we stand—somewhere between--
in the moment we've always dreamed of:
focus of habit under wraps, fear finally
two levels down, wonder driving the bus.
No need to contribute
to retirement or fasten
seat-belts—this passage worth
far more than old age or another
string of red-veined sunsets repeating
over Tahiti's ocean—this once
we let ourselves be, and be, and be.
a train coming on a warm evening
carrying heavy rain:
with shelter near we languish, nuzzling
the luxury of all that fluid change--
at hand, but not on us yet.
Deep breaths, relaxed and alert,
the work approaching, the deluge--
or is it already complete? Are we finished--
simply waiting for the curtain,
for what has been stored in potential
to play out in release?
Anchor cut, the ship
moves—suspended between
its own power and that of the sea--
into the realm of wind shifts
and rogue waves; the barrier between
life and death more porous. Tears
beginning, live emotion, the thrill
of grief as reptile-brain recalls
all the ways of destruction
as near at hand as those of salvation.
And yet we stand—somewhere between--
in the moment we've always dreamed of:
focus of habit under wraps, fear finally
two levels down, wonder driving the bus.
No need to contribute
to retirement or fasten
seat-belts—this passage worth
far more than old age or another
string of red-veined sunsets repeating
over Tahiti's ocean—this once
we let ourselves be, and be, and be.
Art and Practice
Don Freas is an artist, writer, and poet in Olympia, Washington.
Don Freas is an artist, writer, and poet in Olympia, Washington.
RSS Feed
1/3/2019
0 Comments