Redtree Times

I am on the road today, heading down to Alexandria for my annual Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery,so this is going to be short an to the point.  I’m thinking it’s going to be a good talk today with a drawing for one of my paintings ( and maybe a few other goodies!) at the end.  If you’re in the area, please stop in and say hello.  I hope to see you there!

I forgot to mention yesterday when writing about the workshop that on Friday  the wife of Frank Bocek, one of the participants and a stained glass artist to boot, brought her harp into the Arts Center.  Meredith Bocek is a professional harpist and used the opportunity to rehearse a bit, the sounds of her harp serenading the painters in the second floor as they worked on their new skills.  It was quite a wonderful addition to the tone of the day.

So, I thought I’d play one of my favorite harp songs for the Sunday morning music.  It is, of course, from Harpo Marx in an appearance on I Love Lucy in 1955.  Take Me Out to the Ballgame never sounded more ethereal.  Have a great day and I hope to see you at the gallery today!

 

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In a hurry this morning but wanted to send out many thanks to everyone who came out the West End Gallery yesterday for the Gallery Talk.  Just a wonderful group which made the whole thing go very well.  The time seemed to fly by and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.  Many thanks.

The photo here is not from the talk, in case you’re wondering. It’s a shot of the Sparkletones, a short-lived band from the 50’s whose hit is this week’s Sunday music.  It’s about a minute and half of get up and go called Black Slacks.  Now I have to get up and go.  Have a great Sunday!

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It’s been a kind of hectic week here in the studio, just plain busy mixed in with the unavoidable distractions that life sometimes throws at us.  In the chaos of yesterday, I realized that I was remiss in not mentioning that my nephew, Greg, had run in his first Boston Marathon on Monday.

He has run for quite some time now as a recreational runner and in recent years has blossomed, finishing near the front in some races and winning a few along the way.  Even in his early forties, his times have kept improving due to his hard work and dedication to his running.

So it was a thrill Monday to have the race on as he ran in the rain on those Boston streets.  Throughout the race, I kept getting text messages with his times at different points in the race and was impressed by the constancy of his pace which hardly wavered at all throughout the day.

At the end of the day, in less than idea conditions with rain and wind, he came across the line in a personal best 2:53:40.  That placed him at 1348 overall out of a field of about 30,000 runners and 160th (out of about 2700) in his class– an impressive finish for his first effort on the hallowed course.

I was really proud to see Greg have such a great effort and to have a satisfying result to go along with it.  It’s a wonderful thing to witness someone achieving personal bests through their own hard efforts. My hope is that Greg’s three young sons understand the great lesson he is setting before them and will use it to find something of their own to focus on and work hard at so that they may set their own personal bests throughout their lives.

That would make this race even more of a personal triumph.

So, well done, Greg.  Long may you run.

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I’ve been watching the coverage today of the shootings in Paris at the office of the satire magazine Charlie Hebdo.  It’s a horrific and troubling scene, the act of terrorists who seem at the moment to be acting in the name of some warped version of religion.  That they chose to attack satirists seems a very revealing action to me, one that shows that this is not about a religion retaliating to an insult but rather the actions of those who want to control our thoughts and speech.

Satire is often the first line of defense against those who would try control our thoughts and actions.   Throughout history, up to this very moment, satire’s ability to poke holes in the balloons of power has played a vital role in free societies.  We may not always agree or enjoy it.  It may seem crude and tasteless at times. But it remains one of the pillars of free thought and free speech. An attack on it is an attack on freedom, an attack on free society.

There are people standing in the streets of Paris tonight, holding pens in the air and signs that proclaim: Je suis Charlie.

I am Charlie.

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If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves.

——Lane Kirkland

Ralph Fasanella- Bread and Roses

I caught the end of a Bill Moyers interview yesterday with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz in which he described how our current level of income inequality was surpassing the levels of the prior two times when they reached a level of crisis here in this country– the Gilded Age of the late 19th century and the Roaring 20’s.  In each case, we were at the brink of total collapse but were able to come through and bring wages back into levels of greater equilibrium which always leads to greater prosperity across the board.  He wasn’t too positive about our ability to avoid the consequences of our current inequality, given the ability of the wealthiest to buy political clout with impunity. 

It’s a scary situation and, on this Labor Day weekend, it made me think of what the labor movement has done for this country in battling for greater wage equality.  I went back in the archive to a Labor Day post from back in 2009 that I thought fit the bill.  Here it is:

On this day, Labor Day, I am showing a a painting from the great American folk primitive painter Ralph Fasanella, depicting the famed Bread and Roses strike that took place at the textile plants in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912. I thought it fitting that something be shown that is closer to the spirit of this holiday which has faded from the public’s knowledge in recent years.

I was a union member in my first on-the-books  job at a Loblaw’s grocery store when I was sixteen years old and a few years later I was a member of the Teamster’s Union at the A&P factory where I was employed for several years.  I was the union steward in my department for the last few years, a position that I took because for some reason nobody else wanted the hassle of it.   By taking it  I was protected from being laid off so long as my department was operating so I thought it might be worth a try.  Most days had some sort of small trouble and on a few some major problems.  There was always an argument to be had, either with company supervisors who tried to  circumvent or twist the rules to their advantage or with co-workers who felt the union didn’t go far enough or went too far.  It was a very educational experience.

The most telling thing was the general apathy from many of the workers, the same apathy that has allowed the solidarity of the union to erode and crumble over the years, paralleling the image of labor unions, which has crumbled, perceived now as corrupt and self-serving.  Probably a well deserved image. But the failings of these unions are the failings of men, the same failings that the company owners possessed that the early unions organized against. Greed and a lack of empathy for their workers. It doesn’t take much research to discover that the work conditions of the last 130 or 140 years were deplorable. Long hours. Low pay. Incredibly unsafe conditions. Dismissal for any reason. No rights whatsoever.

Today, many view industry as this amiable, father-like figure but don’t realize how much blood was spilled by early union organizers and members to obtain the things we now take for granted as our rights. Industry did not willingly give up anything to the worker without being forced. I can imagine what our world would look like without the efforts of our unions. This very holiday would not exist to have it’s roots forgotten. The idea of vacations would only exist for the company owners. The pay scale would be similar to those places on the Earth where many of our jobs have migrated, places that allow the avarice of the companies to override the rights and safety of the workers. Places where sweatshops still operate, as they once did here. Places where unschooled children toil in dirty, dank conditions, as they once did here. Places where the health and safety of the workers is secondary to the profit they provide, as it once was here.

You may despise the unions now for their corruption but make no mistake about it- without them our country would look much different. And not in a good way…

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Many artists are offended to find their art in the bathroom of someone they know.  But French artist Junior Fritz Jacquet can find his art in any bathroom he enters.  You see, Jacquet is a paper artist, inspired from an early age by origami, who creates art from discarded toilet paper rolls by folding, squishing and manipulating them into faces.

He then coats them with pigments and shellac, bringing life to the expressive faces.  He has created a series of 40 of these faces which he has titled Masks.  They are wonderfully creative uses of material, taking something that is considered trash and transforming it into something that seems alive. 

For me, they most resemble an assemblage of congressmen.  There is a joke ( or two or three) in there somewhere but I am going to leave that to your own imagination and political leanings.

You can see more of this and the other works of Junior Fritz Jacquet on his website.

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