Publication Date: Friday, March 18, 2005
Mind over madness
Mind over madness
(March 18, 2005) Artist John Cadigan finds solace in his wood carvings
by Sue Dremann
There are symbols in John Cadigan's woodcuts -- and in his mind -- that only he comprehends.
The 34-year-old Palo Alto artist has spent 13 years struggling to control his schizo-affective disorder, a potent and debilitating complex of illnesses that cause its victims to hallucinate, obsess, become depressed and delusional.
But in his struggle to control his illness, he has found salvation in his art.
Cadigan's hands tremble slightly as he speaks, but he shows a buoyant side when he's carving wood blocks. Whistling, the gouge tool cuts rivulets into the smooth, blond wood. Curled shavings peel off from under the curved-tipped tool, which Cadigan jauntily flicks aside after each burrowing motion. He will spend a few hours each day working this way, drawing a series of detailed sketches, carefully transferring the image to the block, then deftly carving.
Cadigan's black-and-white art is vibrant, with swirling lines that take on an almost Op-Art intensity: rings of suns within suns, radiating a cool contrast amid rings of heat. Much of his art is about that duality, he said. The battle within is about good and evil; light and darkness; lucidity and psychosis.
"The art is like a parallel universe I can go into," he said, wandering about his recent exhibition at Menlo Park's Caffe Espresso. Images of Virgin idols, snakes and saints co-mingle with the jumbled symbolism of his hallucinatory, nightmarish demons.
Ask him to explain his art, and the erudite Cadigan will quote Cocteau: "To ask an artist to explain his art is like asking a plant to explain horticulture."
But the works demonstrate the struggles in his mind -- some of which address universal themes, with titles such as "Mind Over Madness," "Confusion," "Contemplation" and "Direction."
"There is a sense of relief after I carve -- there's something about the process," he said. He wears a necklace adorned with a Scandinavian knife charm -- a symbol of the duality of the destructive and healing forces of cutting. "It's good and evil. It's good in that it's what I use for my art; but it's evil in that I have horrible visualizations and I think I'm being cut," he said.
"Direction" is a work about not knowing where to go, he said. A radiating sun containing compass-like arrows points to the four directions, while a demon's head with tusks also appears. In the creature's image, there is a sense of the lurking dread laying in the subconscious, a sense of something not quite hidden, ready to emerge from Cadigan's mind.
But below the mask-like demon is a Zuni turtle fetish, which Cadigan said is a symbol of longevity, contrasting the tangible and earth-bound with the illusory.
The three images emerge from a series of bold, vertical lines, tying them together like images on a totem pole. Parallel lines on the right side of the print balance the picture, drawing the viewer's eye into the composition. They have a dynamism in themselves, creating an almost freeway-like movement, as if direction is a straight path.
A hand points toward the turtle symbol, but is joined at the wrist by the claws of a gargoyle, fitting symbols of the real flesh of humanity, and his own nightmarish vision, pulling at the same body.
Cadigan prefers to work in black and white to give the works an immediacy, and because "you can see the parallels better in black and white," he said. His art is informed by the dark works of Francisco Goya and Hieronymous Bosch, whose works are peopled with grotesque demons. But the works also incorporate patterns based on African textiles and Inuit art.
"The intricacy of the patterns just blows me away," he said.
Chief among images in his work is the snake, and it winds its way through a number of his most important pieces. The largest is his two-by-four-foot manifesto of imagery entitled "Confusion." A two-headed snake is the underlying integrating force in the work, wriggling its way through the complex of images.
"It's sort of a Where's Waldo?," he said.
Every figure he's ever drawn since high school was incorporated into the print. The panel is filled with intricate characters: birds, fish, seals. A diseased eye is a major motif in the picture, a manifestation of the "evil eye" of suspicion and self-loathing the illness cultivates.
Cadigan is careful not to put too much meaning on the complex symbols emerging throughout his works.
"I like meanings to be elusive rather than transfixed. My prints aren't like paintings in the Renaissance, where every symbol has a specific meaning," he said, adding that the symbols flow from his subconscious.
Cadigan's subconscious has taken him to many places he never imagined. An art student at the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa., he was on a promising trajectory when he had a psychotic break in his senior year. He spent most of his time holed up in a basement apartment, terrified to leave.
"I was hospitalized for two weeks. It became clear I couldn't go back," he said.
In 1992, his older sister, Katie, invited him to stay with her and husband Mark in the Bay Area for a few months. But Cadigan only got worse. He became convinced he had been given the "evil eye" and was cursed. A full diagnosis slowly emerged.
It became clear, Katie said, that her brother wasn't going to ever return to the person he formerly had been. When the strain of living with his paranoia became too great for Katie and Mark, Cadigan began living in group homes for the mentally ill or with disabled veterans. He continued to pursue his art, sometimes finding rat footprints running across his artwork in the dingy basement where he lived.
Cadigan expressed his horrific self-perceptions through disturbing pictures such as "My Fingers are Falling Off" and "Frogs in My Stomach." Sometimes he cut himself through acts of self-mutilation.
He tried all kinds of medications to control his illness and underwent two courses of electro-convulsive therapy. It didn't work; more hospitalizations followed. But slowly, with the help a psychiatrist and a new class of drugs, he began to get better.
"Schizophrenia affects many parts of the brain. It affects motor control. He couldn't at first create fine carvings, but now he's on new medications. It's the reverse process of Charles Schulz with Charlie Brown, (Schulz's lines became loose and wavy as his health deteriorated)," Katie observed.
Cadigan also worked to understand his illness by filming himself. He learned the techniques from Katie, a documentary filmmaker. "People Say I'm Crazy" is Cadigan's self-portrait of his illness -- and of his art. The film, completed in 2000, has been hailed by critics for its unsparing look at mental illness, without the glamour of "A Beautiful Mind." It has won numerous awards, including the grand prize at the Chicago International Film Festival. He continues to film himself, she said.
Cadigan has also become re-acquainted with his faith.
"I had a revelation one day that what all my work is about is ultimately a search for God," he said. "I was thinking about enigma, mystery in art and mystery in the creative process. God is the ultimate enigma. Then the question is, how do you go about doing that? How do you put pen to paper and say this is enigmatic -- this is full of wonder, full of awe?," he asked in the film.
The dark content of Cadigan's work has also evolved.
"There is more and more joy creeping into the work. It's full of radiance," Katie added. Two large, intricately carved panels were recently installed in the healing chapel at the Church of the Epiphany in San Carlos. The chapel is a place where Cadigan has often gone for healing, Katie said. A dedication for the two panels occurred March 13.
The panels reflect two Biblical stories about healing and transformation: The Story of Lazarus; and The Transfiguration, the transformative moment when Jesus goes from being a nobody to taking on the mantle of his ministry, Katie said.
E-mail Staff Writer Sue Dremann at sdremann@paweekly.com.
What: Woodcuts by John Cadigan
Where: Caffe Espresso 1929, 1929 Menalto Ave. in Menlo Park
When: Mon.-Fri. 7 a.m.-6 p.m.; Sat. 8 a.m.-6 p.m.; Sun. 8 a.m.-3 p.m.
Info: Call (650) 566-8030.
Cadigan's works will hang at the San Jose Museum of Art as part of a fundraiser for Alliance for Community Care the week of May 15. The museum is located at 110 S. Market St. in San Jose. Call (408) 271-6840. His film, "People Say I'm Crazy," will be screened May 15 at 4 p.m. at Camera 12, 2015 Second St. in San Jose. Call (408) 254-6828 or visit www.alliance4care.org.
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