Poems by Mark Arvilla

Coming in off the lake

in the evening coolness.

Hushed voices and

deepening shadows and

the lake still reflecting

the pale light of the sky.

No fish, no sweat. A hot

cup of coffee in the cabin

while the night comes on

like that big-breasted lover

with a soul as sweet

as dark chocolate.

Lying in bed as sleep

steels over me with

a gentle softness and

I hear the tender voice

rustling in the trees

and lapping at the shore.

Pyschic Repairman

a poem by Mark Arvilla

On the corner

of Third and Main,

There’s an odd little shop

with a heart in the window

made of out of red lights

that blink on and off.

On the door,

a neatly lettered

sign reads;

Your Friendly

Neighborhood

Psychic Repairman.

The crowd passes

without a second glance.

But now and then,

some lonely soul

opens the door.

I could go

I could go into the dusk of this green darkness. A dim figure strolling away across the lawn. Pausing to wave back to you at the treeline and then lost to sight in the forest. A few birds singing sleepily. And everything gently fading into the deeper darkness of night.

Mark Arvilla speaks with his channeler Feb. 27, 1990

Ckick this sentence with your computer mouse it will take you to a podcast of Mark Arvilla speaking by telephone with his spiritual channeler aproximately a year before his death of an overdose. He is struggling to choose between his art and his career . The art fed his soul…the career feed the house payments and the necessity of maintaining life.

Mark Arvilla or MARVILLA took these BLACK AND WHITE photos during a military protest on the beach of Lake Superior prior to his death in 1991.

Here is an article by Tim Anderson published in the news and entertainment weekly of the Twin Ports, Ripsaw.

In the last few decades “outsider art” has become a buzzword in the art world. The works of the disenfranchised, the insane, the damaged or the developmentally disabled have undergone a renaissance of reappraisement, finding a new gallery spotlight for many who in other eras would have otherwise gone unnoticed. Like Grandma Moses with wacked out sensibilities, these artists often cut through the pretensions of “modern art” and express things purely and undiluted by the filters and preconceptions that burden most. Duluth (Minnesota) seems to be undergoing an “outsider” renaissance of its own, as evidenced by the featured shows here.

MARVILLA AT THE TWEED

Mark Arvilla is Duluth’s own treasure of “outsider” or “fringe” art. While going unheralded his entire life, he was only discovered years after his passing by talking head Michelle Lee of KBJR News 6 fame. In collaboration with his family and the Tweed Museum of Art, the work of Marvilla, as he signed his pieces, is a major collection of vast significance and beauty. Viewed chronologically, Marvilla began in a very detailed, precise form in his earlier works only to strip away those layers of exactitude to practice a more minimal, primal form of simple line and color. Many of the paintings are landscapes and they exude an ethereal, forbidding presence bordering on mystical, finding common ground with the landscape works of the French Nabis artists ande even later Van Gogh.

His later work is a treasure trove of mystical symbolism, frenetic in their composition and color. His final works are directly influenced by the spirit world, and are informed by his contact with a pyschic channeler and increased mystical preoccupations in the last years of his life. His last painting, still displayed on the easel it was found on, seems to be an essay in brdiging the gap between the land of the living and the world of the dead. Marvilla’s artwork wasn’t the only piece of the puzzle he left behind, and volumes of poetry, prose and the manuscript of his autobiography remain to flesh out the rest, as well as audio cassettes of his conversations with the psychic he grew close to near the end. The collection is large, and one hopes that an intrepid UMD student will see the potential for a thesis or monograph in what is certainly one of Duluth’s most interesting art stories.

So my question to the blog-o-sphere is what shall I do with this collection? It has been in storage since the Tweed Museum Show several years ago. Someone suggested a bon fire, others say hang on to them, others say try to sell them. I have no experience in sales…my space is limited and I just cannot consider destroying a man’s lifes work by fire.

Any one out there who may have a suggestion please leave a comment. Thank you.

MY FATHER

My father,

who is in heaven,

simplicity is your name.

Your Kingdom on earth is but a trifle

and you left no will.

You read western novels,

hunted, fished, fried chicken for Sunday dinner,

in short: commonplace.

As a sinner, you were

definitely minor league

and you were too ordinary to be evIl.

It was little enought that I gave you

while in this life,

and perhaps for you

that little was enough.

But it would be something of a paradise

to be sitting beside you

in the sauma by the lake

with the sun setting

on a summer evening.

Copyright 2008 REDBIKINILADY

NAMING THE CAT

“Which one would you like?” She asked,

“I’ll take that black, male kitten. And that’s his name: Blackmail.”

Marvilla copyright (c) 1987 by Mark Arvilla

CRIPES

Cripes,

This cat is crazy!

Racing around the room

like a mad monk

loaded with arsenic.

Should I wring his neck

or play mouse?

Marvilla Copyright 1987

POUNCE DE KITTEN ON

Stealthily he crept

across the floor,

paused in mid-slink,

little hinder twitching,

and then he pounced.

Pounched upon nothing.

Nothing at all.

Marvilla copyright 1987

CAT GOES TO THE VET

In December, I took

the cat to the vet.

The cat shivered,

cold and frightened;

clung to my coat.

When I got home, put

his toys in a corner;

a scruffy tennis ball,

a ragged sock,

a cloth mouse

filled with catnip,

a red drum with

a bell inside.

Marvilla copyright 1987

These are some of the slides that reflect Mark Arvilla’s work. I will post more as time permits

“His later work is a treasure trove of mystical symbolism, frenetic in their composition and color. His final works are directly influenced by the spirit world…and are informed by his contact with a psychic channeler and increased mystical preoccupations in the last years of his life…”

I have several tapes of Marvilla talking with his psychic channeler and will be posted some in the future.