When you get a great night’s sleep, all seems well in the world. That is the shifting thought playing in my artwork, “Sweet Dreams.”
As adults, we dream of returning to those days when we slept like babies, the biblical promise (Prov 3:24) of following God’s commands. In fact, the very phrase “sweet dreams” derives from that passage. When I was a kid, they were the last words I heard before Mom shut my bedroom door and I drifted off to Never Never Land, where my heart flew on wings and my dreams were born.
At our home, getting eight hours of solid sleep is so rare that when it happens, we find ourselves unable to believe it, and walk around in a total stupor until noon. We look outside to see our trash receptacles dropped three houses down from where they are supposed to be and think, “It’s ok…whatever, no problem.” Even when a hawk, seemingly out of nowhere, swoops in to snatch a bunny right out of my front lawn, I have a feeling that it happened for a reason, it’s all good, and that, well, the world is gonna make it, that life is good. Hey, good sleep does that to you.
Our bedroom, lest I get too personal here, could double as the National Headquarters for Sleep Research, containing a variety of gadgets and devices to bring on the shut-eye. We have a white-noise machine, an air purifier, ear plugs, and a Habbermacker and Shopperypepper Alpha Cooling Blanket used by Nasa in the 1960s. By the time we get all our toys fired up and going, our bedroom sounds something like a Disneyworld ride, complete with a wind tunnel, cannon fire, and a weather system. It’s a blast really, and worth the wait in line.
However, every now and then I have a nightmare. I thrash around in bed trying to outrun some villain in a setting that is vaguely familiar but just out of focus. Yes, I’m catching a glimpse of it right now…There I am! I’m stark naked in an ancient amphitheater lecturing to a laughing crowd of Platos or Hippopotamuses. Bed covers are flying, my arms and legs are thrashing, and I’m shouting out Greek wisdoms in iambic pentameter. My wife wakes up with a shock, and as I regain a semblance of consciousness, I try, vainly, to convince her that I am learning a second language in my spare time. Nightmares in Greek do that to you.
Yes, sleep is a crazy mix of subconscious movies, some dramas, some comedies, some horror. In my artwork titled Sweet Dreams, both worlds appear. Pink prevails and set a warm tone for horizontal patches swinging back and forth in a consoling rhythm, like waves of rapid eye movements. They are made from a kid’s green dinosaur pajamas that sprinkle down the picture plane. Near the bottom, as a landscape of tanks and dinosaurs battle it out, a goofy stuffed animal swoops in to referee and sings everyone to sleep via a music box whose crank you turn yourself.
As the innocent melody sifts through the frame, our memories of childhood surface, and we rest for a moment, a child’s moment, to the tune winding down. We are reminded, perhaps subconsciously, that we can pull the covers up over our heads and roll over for another forty winks. We sleep again, wide awake, and escape for a moment into the Sweet Dreams of wind-up toys and stuffed animals. Art has a way of taking you there, doing that to you. When it’s good, like sweet, sweet sleep, it winds you up and lets you wind down. When it’s great, you never knew what hit you.