Redtree Times

The mass of mankind is divided into two classes, the Sancho Panza’s who have a sense for reality, but no ideals, and the Don Quixote’s with a sense for ideals, but mad.

–George Santayana, Little Essays

Now that we’re in the Christmas season, I’ve been thinking about some of my favorite gifts I’ve received over my life. There have been many that have had special meaning such as the typewriter, that I wrote of earlier, that was a gift from my parents in order to foster my writing ambitions as a teen. Most are gone now but some still live with me. This is one that does.

My sister, Linda, gave this to me many, many moons ago when I was 12 or 13 years old. It’s a simple carving of what is probably meant to be Don Quixote. It doesn’t matter- it’s always been Don Quixote to me.

It’s not finely carved, probably made by a guy in some tropical foreign land where he knocks out 20 of these a day to earn a meager living. Doesn’t matter. To me, it’s a Rodin. I’ve carried it with me all my life, through ups and downs, and the wear shows on it. There’s a nick from his hat and a scratch here and there. It even broke in two at his ankles and needed mending just to continue standing.

And he does.

I view him as an inspirational icon, a constant reminder to dream beyond what is in front of you, to believe that you can exceed what others think is possible for you. That you can be whatever you dream yourself to be.

To tilt at your own windmills.

And to remember that others believe in you.

Simple things and small gestures can have great effect.

Many belated thanks, Linda…

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Cigarettes is a blot on the whole human race.
A man is a monkey with one in his face.
That’s my definition, believe me dear brother,
A fire on one end and a fool on the t’other.

— Tim Spencer, Cigareets, Whuskey, and Wild, Wild Women, 1947

Don’t know how this popped into my mind this morning but I suddenly thought about how Santa Claus was once a shill for cigarettes in mainstream advertising. Growing up, it wasn’t that unusual to see Saint Nick extolling the virtues of a fine smooth smoke. This thought made me look up some old print ads to share.

Some, like the Murad ads, I had not seen before nor was I even aware of the Murad brand. This surprised me because as a kid I knew all the brands that my family members smoked. My parents smoked Camels. One aunt smoked Raleighs, another Salems. My uncles smoked Pall Malls, Lucky Strikes and Marlboros. Somebody in there smoked Winstons but I can’t remember who it was exactly. Doesn’t matter, of course. Just a memory check.

It turns out that Murads were a brand made in NY using pure Turkish tobacco. As the American tobacco industry grew in the aftermath of World War I, Turkish tobacco use waned and with it, the Murad brand. Their ads with Santa are among the more lurid, with Santa slumped against a chimney as he takes a smoke break from his Christmas deliveries. 

Thought I’d share some of them below. A favorite is the Pall Mall ad that promotes cigarette smoking as a preventative against a scratchy throat. Times certainly have changed. This reminded me of an old song that was written in 1947 by Tim Spencer of the Sons of the Pioneers. The song was Cigareets, Whusky, and Wild, Wild Women. While I like their original version, I prefer the one from Red Ingle and the Natural Seven who had a hit with it in 1948.

Don’t know if Santa went along with the whiskey and women part. Wait a second. Of course, he did.  A quick search found plenty of whiskey ads with Santa along with some for women’s lingerie, including ne where Santa appears to be taking an upskirt view. The one Dewars ad with Santa without pants is a bit disturbing, as well.

Oh, Santa, I hope you’re clean and sober for this coming holiday season…

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Dawn’s Return— Now at West End Gallery

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

–Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891)

Sitting here in the studio at 5:15 AM waiting for the sun to come up. Still a ways to go before it cracks the horizon this morning. Nestled in the woods as I am, I don’t get to see many spectacular sunrises. Just the light filtering through the trees.

But it’s enough just to see the darkness recede.

Is it punishment though, as Wilde’s character, Gilbert, states in The Critic as Artist?

I guess it could be viewed that way. The dreamer tends to sense and see things before others. They can often spot patterns and trends that portend future events. Unfortunately, that isn’t limited to only good or inconsequential things.

Sometimes the dawn ‘s light reveals troubling news to the dreamer long before others even notice that it is on the way. They have to live with it and try to alert the others, many who refuse to believe such things.

I suppose it is a punishment in that way– to see indications of danger and travails ahead but having your warnings ignored or minimized.

Hmm. Something to think about this morning, once dawn breaks.

Here’s an old song written in the years immediately after World War I, at a time when the world was just emerging from the dark. It is The World is Waiting For the Sunrise. It was originally a hit for bandleader Isham Jones in 1922 and became a big hit for Les Paul and Mary Ford in the early 1950’s and it has been recorded by all sorts of artists over the years, including the Beatles. I really like this version from Willie Nelson along with a group of old time Texas musicians such as Paul Buskirk on the mandolin.

Give a listen, if you feel like it. I’m going to listen to it again as I sit here still waiting in the dark for the dawn to break.

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Jean Arp- Torso of a Giant 1964

Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation… tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.

–Jean Arp

I came across this quote above from sculptor Jean Arp that I shared here back in 2013. At the time, a friend pointed out that she somewhat disagreed, that our anxiety doesn’t subside when silence goes away and passes into legend, as Arp suggested. 

At the time, I agreed with her disagreement. I certainly didn’t lose my anxiety in the face of constant sound. But after reading it again after the past ten years, I believe I just wasn’t reading enough into his intended meaning.

I believe– and I might be wrong here– that he meant that as silence leaves us and is replaced by a constant cacophony of sounds, we become desensitized to the noise. It no longer has an effect on us.

Where once it created anxiety, there was now just a void of reaction. 

An inhuman void, as Arp put it. 

Some of us may have lost our anxiety but they may have also lost something more in the form of basic human feelings such as empathy and kindness and caring. I think this Arp’s supposition has become more evident in the past ten years as our society has been infected with noise and distraction of a bullhorn that carries a constant blast in the form of disinformation, misinformation, unending conspiracy theories, and absolute falsehoods.

The void caused by anxiety’s departure is replaced by anger, distrust, and hatred.

And even more noise.

And as Arp points out, this spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.

In the ten years since I first ran the words from Arp, I believe I now better understand the meaning of Arp’s words now as a result of what we have seen happening here. It makes the ideas of contemplation and meditation in order to not succumb to the void, seem even more vital to our survival.

I wasn’t intending to write anything this morning but reading Arp’s quote again just sparked something. Now, I have to find some silence for a while.

To ease my anxiety– not lose it entirely.

Here’s a piece of music in that spirit. It is a longtime favorite of mine that I have played here a number of times in the past. It played a large part in how I came to view my own work early in my career, establishing what I wanted to take from it for myself. It’s from composer Arvo Pärt and his composition Tabula Rasa. This is the second movement, fittingly titled Silentium. 

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Andrew Wyeth – Fence Line 1967

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.

—Andrew Wyeth

This post ran several years ago. We have yet to feel the true blast of winter here which is fine. However, my feelings on the winter landscape are very much in line with those of Andrew Wyeth. I like that the cold of winter drives most others inside, taking their noise and busyness with them. The stillness and the dark exposed bones of the trees creates that dead feeling as Wyeth puts it.

It reminds me of why I like walking in cemeteries, especially empty ones. As in winter, there’s a peaceful hush over everything. It feels unhurried. And why not? Nobody there is going anywhere. Nor do they have appointments or deadlines.

But the mystery remains. Who were these people? What gave them joy? What stories are buried with them, never to be told again?

It adds a bit of a melancholic edge to the stones and trees.

That feeling certainly permeates Wyeth’s winter scenes. I thought it was worth looking at them again until the snow finally comes to my part of the world.

Andrew Wyeth- Heavy Snow

Andrew Wyeth- Not Plowed 1985

Andrew Wyeth- Farm Pond Study

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Moonlight Quartet–At West End Gallery

Winter

Allegro non molto

To tremble from cold in the icy snow,
In the harsh breath of a horrid wind;
To run, stamping one’s feet every moment,
Our teeth chattering in the extreme cold

Largo

Before the fire to pass peaceful,
Contented days while the rain outside pours down.

Allegro

We tread the icy path slowly and cautiously,
for fear of tripping and falling.
Then turn abruptly, slip, crash on the ground and,
rising, hasten on across the ice lest it cracks up.
We feel the chill north winds course through the home
despite the locked and bolted doors…
this is winter, which nonetheless
brings its own delights.

— Antonio Vivaldi

Just want to share a little Vivaldi today. Here’s the Winter segment from his best-known work, the Four Seasons. Vivaldi also composed four separate sonnets for this work to give the listener a better idea of the feeling he was trying to evoke in each of the seasons. The sonnet for Winter is shown above.

This performance of the Winter portion is on instruments of the period in Vivaldi composed the piece. It is performed by renowned violinist Cynthia Miller Freivogel and the Baroque music group, Voices of Music. I played this piece here several years back but it felt right this morning.

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Room to Breathe, 2010

Each for himself, we all sustain
The durance of our ghostly pain;
Then to Elysium we repair,
The few, and breathe this blissful air.

–Virgil, The Aeneid, ca 25 BC

Got a bunch of stuff to get to this morning but wanted to share a favorite piece from the studio. Room to Breathe, shown above, has been around since 2010, making the gallery rounds and somehow always coming back to me.

That it returned always surprised me since it was one of those pieces that felt very close to me in spirit. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. Maybe it was too narrow in its definition. I don’t know. I will never be able to fully describe why one painting appeals more than any other to anyone other than myself.

For me, it’s the feel of this painting that captures me. It is not joyful nor is it despairing in tone. It just is as it is, accepting of the present moment, freed from both the past and the future. The Red Tree here stands apart. I t symbolizes, for me, my mantra request to the universe: Just let me be. I don’t want to be bothered nor do I want to bother anyone. 

As a result, there is a placid calmness in this painting for me. I can’t tell you how many times I have stopped to take in this painting and felt as though I’d absorbed a healthy dose of that calmness as I looked. It helps me when things start to get hectic, when I feel hurried and out of sorts.

Like right this very moment. Got to run.

Anyway, thought I’d share it along with some words from old Virgil and an old song from The Hollies that seems to be the final piece in my little jigsaw puzzle this morning. Here’s The Air That I Breathe.

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Principle Gallery Redtree Invitation, 2000

Fogeydom is the last bastion of the bore and reminiscence is its anthem. It is futile to want the old days back, but that doesn’t mean one should ignore the lessons of the visitable past.

–Paul Theroux, Remember the Cicadas and the Stars?

Don’t mean to be an old fogey but the following does have a reminiscence. However, it does have a lesson. Or so I think. Let’s begin this way:

It’s that time of the year when I finally get to some home and studio repairs and maintenance. Much of my days are spent on the several projects on my list, some of which have been waiting for well over a decade. Maybe even two decades. Who’s counting at this point?

One of the projects was a small one, organizing a cupboard filed with old show invitations along with magazines and books that feature my work. It was a pleasant stroll down Memory Lane going through the many invitations, seeing both the differences and similarities down through the years. Some really jumped out at me and some were much more understated.

But one made me stop for a bit to consider it. It was an invitation from my first solo show at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria from June,2000. It was the show that formally introduced the Red Tree to the world and was simply titled Redtree. I was still using it as one word then though I don’t recall ever consciously changing it.

As I said, it made me stop for a few moments to let a wave of memories wash over me. It was an important show for me then and now. It was a nerve-wracking experience since it was my first real experience in carrying a solo show in a regular gallery and I saw it as possibly my one and only chance to exhibit on such a large stage. A bad show would have devastated me and I knew it. After all, I was only several years removed from the darkest period of my life, the memories of which were still fresh. I knew I was fortunate to have such an opportunity so soon and needed it to succeed more than I would ever admit at the time.

Fortunately, Lady Luck was on my side. I am not going to go into the details right now, but it was wildly successful night with a whirlwind of people for which I was totally unprepared. When the last person finally left the gallery and the door was locked, Michele and the rest of the gallery staff and I stopped and looked at each other for a ripe moment. I remember saying, “What the hell just happened?”

As I said, it was an important show for me. It gave me a degree of confidence that I was lacking and set the table for years ahead. More importantly, it tattooed the Red Tree on me and I have carried it ever since.

All this and more as I looked at the old invitation. The painting on its cover was titled Redtree, of course. Seeing this reminded me of its sad history. It was a large oil painting on mounted paper that framed out at 40″ high by 60″ wide under glass. It sold to a collector from Wisconsin and in shipment was severely damaged. When the painting came back to me, I could hear the mounds of shards of glass shifting in the crate. There were slashes and holes throughout the surface of painting. It was not repairable. Fortunately, it was insured but the loss of the painting that symbolized that show hurt a bit.

The painting still lives with me now. It was in a box in my old studio for years, even as the old studio began to fall down. I finally brought it down and pulled it out. It is a bit grimy and the red of the tree is less vibrant. It now hangs in a work area of my basement where I stain frames. It is attached to the wall at one end of the space, used to cover some exposed waste lines going out of the basement.

It might seem a sad end for a piece that has meant so much for me. I don’t see it that way. I see it as a lesson for a life. Though it had its day in the sun and was admired by many, it has taken a beating and has the scars to show for it. It exists now in much more humble surroundings than it was originally destined for.

But it serves a purpose and more than that, it endures. On good days, its strength and beauty still outshine its scratches, scars, and scuffs. And looking over at it now when I am working down there makes me smile, even if it is a bittersweet one at that.

I can relate to it and I believe it can relate to me. We’re pretty much alike.

It also reminds me that this coming year’s show at the Principle Gallery will be the 25th anniversary of that show. It’s hard for me to fathom because in a lot of ways I still feel like that untested guy with shaky nerves before that first show.  I am excited for this year’s show and am frantically running concepts and such through my head for the work that will be in it.

It’s pretty much the same feeling as it was back in 2000. Some things never change.

Like the Redtree, they endure.

The Redtree as it is today.

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