It’s been a strange week spent trying to get some chores done around the studio and our home but not actually achieving as much as I had hoped. Most of my time has been spent thinking about some concepts that I am trying to move forward with in my work. A lot of this has to do with using different materials in a way that seems organic and not forced– one of the differences between art and craft.
Sometimes I will form an idea that seems like the perfect direction to head but once I extend my thinking through it I find that the result that I imagine is so much less that I had originally foresaw. I begin to see the idea becoming too crafty and just that thought puts a serious damper on my enthusiasm for the concept.
So I continue to roll things around in my mind, trying to find that elusive edge which I can grab on to and run with. This is a bigger part of what I do than one might imagine. It’s never just a matter of physically placing yourself in the studio and mechanically moving materials through a process to produce paintings. The mental aspect is the hardest part of the process, hard to describe and even harder to master.
It was put best by iconic painter L.S. Lowry when asked what he was doing when he wasn’t painting. His response: “Thinking about painting.”
So I am here this morning, thinking about painting. But I am my own master, my own boss, which makes a nice intro to this week’s selection for some Sunday Morning Music. It’s a song from nuevo flamenco guitarist Jesse Cook and friends called La Rumba D’el Jefe— The Boss’ Rumba. So, give a listen, maybe move your feet a little bit and have a great Sunday. Me? I’ll be thinking…
Back in June, I wrote about going to the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum to see the painting shown above, Achelous and Hercules, a wondrous mural from the great American painter Thomas Hart Benton. It was commissioned to hang in a now-defunct Kansas City department store in 1947 and after the store closed in 1984 this masterpiece was given to the Smithsonian. It is a 5′ high and 22′ wide wooden panel that Benton painted in egg tempera. It’s a piece I could stand in front of for hours, losing myself in the rhythms and colors.
That being said, I came across a video taken from an old film that shows the incredibly elaborate process that Benton used in the making of this mural, which took about eight months. It is fascinating and unusual to see a known masterpiece coming together in all its stages. It makes me appreciate this painting even more.
Here is that video. It’s about 11 minutes long and worth the time spent.
It’s a pretty busy Sunday morning as I am in the midst of prepping for a two day workshop I’m giving this week in Penn Yan followed by my annual Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria next Sunday. More details on that in the next few days.
So while I am a little tight on time this week I wanted to keep up with my habit of playing some Sunday music. This week is a bit of an oddity and is nowhere near where I thought the song might end up. I stumbled across this video from a a Dutch group called Heidevolk which translates as “heather folk.” They consider themselves to be a pagan folk metalband and base their music on Germanic mythology and ancient pagan themes.
Yikes!
Not what I envisioned for this morning but this song and video made me laugh and I found myself myself kind of half singing along by the end. It’s called Vulgaris Magistralis and is about some sort of mythic figure who hides from sight like a Yeti but comes out to ride around on his mammoth.
And on Sunday he rides a mastodon. So if you’re out there today and get cut off in traffic by a guy on a hairy elephant, be careful– it might be Vulgaris Magistralis. And his road rage is epic.
Born to Run turned 40 years old yesterday and I am somehow surprised, even though I am well aware of time passing. Maybe because it remains so in the present for me to this day. Actually, my first artistic foray involved selling Bruce t-shirts out of the want ads in the back of Circus magazine. They were a little crude, screen-printed with a logo for the E Street Band that I had designed on the front and a verse from Born to Run on the back. Sold a few, mainly to fans in Europe including one in Northern Ireland who remains a friend to this very day, but not enough to call it a success or even break even.
But Springsteen, and Born to Run in particular, had a huge influence on my life as well, well beyond that failed attempt at marketing. I was knocked out by his commitment to his passion, his need to keep true to his own vision for his work and his need to do all he could to get that vision across to his audience. It may not always be your style or taste, but his work is as true to his vision as any artist in any medium.
Here’s a blog entry from back in 2009 where I documented my first encounter with Bruce:
When I was seventeen years old I left high school early, in January. I guess I graduated. I had enough credits, had fulfilled all the requirements. Never went to a ceremony, never received a diploma. I had had enough school at that point. I was adrift in my life. No real goals to speak of. Oh, I had desires and dreams but no direction, no guidance.
At some point, I decided i would move to Syracuse and work for my brother, putting in above-ground swimming pools, but that wouldn’t start until April so I had several months to kill. Free time. I spent most of my time reading or watching TV or just driving around. One day in February, I stopped in at the local OTB (that’s off-track betting, by the way) and bet my last eight dollars on the ponies at Aqueduct.
Good fortune was with me that day and I won, hitting the daily double and walking away with a couple of hundred dollars. I called Cheri, my girlfriend (and now my wife) and asked if she would be interested in going out. There was a guy playing tonight at the Arena in Binghamton who I had heard a little about. I had his first two LPs and they were alright. Might be interesting and I had money burning a hole in my pocket. His name was Bruce Springstone, Springstein- something like that.
So we went to Binghamton. We got there about an hour before the show and it seemed so different than other shows we’d been to at that time, the mid-70’s. It was so quiet. People were lined up but it was almost silent, like there was this heavy air of anticipation stifling all sound. We still needed tickets so we headed to the box office. I asked the lady behind the glass for the best seats she had and after a moment she slid me two tickets. I looked at them then asked if she had anything better. She laughed and said no, these were pretty good.
They were in the third row, just left of centerstage.
I did say that I was seventeen, right?
Inside, there was a quiet stillness as we took out seats. There weren’t the screams of drunk kids nor the pungent clouds of pot smoke. No beach balls bouncing through crowd–just that heavy air of anticipation. As we waited, the people around us kept nervously looking at the stage, which was close enough to touch, as a well dressed older man tuned a grand piano. We had no idea what to expect but our interest was being piqued. Finally, the roadies cleared the stage and the arena went black. The first Bruuuces filled the air.
The lights came up and there they were, only feet away. Bruce was in a white collarless shirt buttoned at the neck and a vest with a woolen sport jacket. Miami Steve ( Silvio for those of you who know him from the Sopranos) was dressed in a hot pink suit with a white fedora. And directly in front of us, resplendent in a white suit that seemed to glow in the lights was the Big Man himself, Clarence Clemons, his sax glinting gold.
It was overwhelming for someone not knowing what to expect, like mistakenly walking into a revival meeting and coming out converted. It was unlike anything I had ever seen to that time. It was pure sonic nirvana with the thump of Mighty Max’s bass drum rattling my sternum and the Big Man’s sax flowing high over jangly guitar and tinkling piano lines.
But more than that was the sheer effort that was put out by Springsteen. It was the first time I had seen someone so committed to what they did. It seemed that all that mattered at that moment for him was to get across that space to the people in that arena. He dove across the stage. He clambered onto speakers. He gave everything. By the end of the show, some three and a half hours later, he appeared to have been dragged from a river. He was soaked from the top of his boots to the top of head and when he played his Telecaster, his hand on the neck of the guitar would fill with a pool of sweat.
His desire and commitment to please us was something I carried with me.
Several years later I ran into a person who had been at that show and when I told him my luck at getting such great seats he turned green with envy. His seats were much further back in the hockey arena. We then both agreed that our favorite moment was when they did a cover of It’s My Life from the Animals. We didn’t really know one another but we both gushed about how that song had moved us, had changed our lives in some small way. I still carry that image and when I hear that song I am suddenly 17 years old again. And ten feet tall with the world at my feet because it was my life and I’d do what I want…
That’s my first Bruce story.
Here’s She’s the One from the year before the show I was at. Enjoy.
One of the interesting aspects of doing what I do is seeing where the images eventually finds their way. They have ended up in American Embassies in several countries, in magazines and on book covers here and abroad as well as on several CD covers. One was even included in a recent history text book. They have found their way to most corners of the globe, making them much more well traveled than their maker. And in 2016 a couple of images from my Archaeology and Strata series will be part of the annual calendar for the Spanish Society of Soil Science.
It’s gratifying for me to see the work spread out as it has. You hope, as an artist, that your work has a wider appeal, that there is some common denominator in it that speaks across geographic and cultural boundaries. You never know when you are in front of the easel if your work will be anything more than a blob of pigment on a bit of canvas destined for the trash or will take on a life of its own and move on. So to see it move around the globe in some small way is a form of validation for the work, making the next crisis of confidence easier to fight through. And that is no small thing.
Being Sunday it’s time for a little music and I thought I would play a song that kind of jibes with the soil theme of the work here. It’s one of my favorite songs to sing along with from one of my all-time favorites, John Prine. It’s called Please Don’t Bury Me and it’s about as upbeat a song on the subject of dying as you’ll ever hear. Give a listen (and sing along if you know the words!) and have a great Sunday!
I was looking for something else and came across this post from back in 2009 about one of my favorite songs and the unusual man who wrote it. I thought it deserved a replay. Plus I just felt like hearing “Nature Boy”this morning. Here’s how it goes:
Sometimes when you look a little more behind something that’s been in front of you for years you find out things you might have never imagined otherwise. Such is the case with the song, Nature Boy.
Nature Boy, as recorded by the great Nat King Cole, has long been one of my favorite songs. It has a wonderful haunting melody and tells the story of a “strange enchanted boy” and his search to find love. It always has had a sort of mystical feel to me, a real oddity in the world of popular music in 1948 when Nat King Cole recorded and had a huge hit with it, staying at #1 on the charts for eight weeks.
I was going to just have a short post and put up a YouTube video of Cole’s version but in doing so I saw the name of the songwriter, eden ahbez, and was intrigued. Doing a little research I came across some photos of him such as the one above, from the late 40’s sitting with Cowboy Jack Patton ( who wrote Ghost Riders in the Sky) and a spaniel. I’ll let you figure out who is who in the photo. ahbez’s long hair and attire seemed really out of place for me in thinking of 1948 so I read on.
eden ahbez was a real one of a kind character in the world of music and in general. You could probably guess that from the name which he adopted and wrote only in lower case letters. Born in 1908, he is regarded as the first hippie by many, a long-haired and bearded wanderer who crisscrossed the country on foot, wearing robes and sandals, maintained a vegetarian lifestyle and slept out under the stars. In fact, when Nature Boy hit the charts he and his wife were living under the first L on the Hollywood sign, which stoked a bit of a media frenzy around ahbez. He worked in and frequented a vegetarian restaurant (that’s where he met Cowboy Jack Patton, another interesting character) in 1940’s Los Angeles whose German owners preached the gospel of natural and raw foods. Their followers became known as the Nature Boys.
He was not really what I was expecting from a pop songwriter in 1940’s LA. ahbez died in 1995 from injuries sustained in an auto accident. He was 87. His was a truly unique life, just waiting for a biographer to tell the story, and reading the little I discovered makes me find the song even more interesting. Hope you’ll do the same now that you know a bit more about eden ahbez…
I am sort of fascinated with the time around the turn of the 20th century, those years when the country was being transformed by new technologies. The first airplanes were flown, instant long distance communication was now the norm, electricity was becoming more and more common in homes and cars were showing up in the most remote of locations, more and more replacing horses as our primary mode of transportation. . Movies were being made and distributed around the country and recordings of music were heard playing in homes. It was a vibrant,quick moving time filled with seemingly infinite possibilities for those willing to take advantage of the opportunity.
Around that time, my grandfather was a young professional wrestler here in my home town. Matches often took place at one of the many vaudeville theaters in the city, the match ending the night’s bill of dog acts, acrobats, singers, dancers, jugglers and maybe even a movie thrown into the mix. Like the time, it was a fast paced mix.
I read an account of one of his matches that took place at a local Athletic Club which were basically Men’s Clubs that had a number of teams in different sports that competed with other clubs throughout the area and also provided a place for guys to congregate and drink. This particular night his match was a Smoker ( which was just a night of entertainment) at the Kanaweola Club. There was a singer then a short boxing match followed by a traveling family of acrobats. Then came a gentleman who danced, putting on a “demonstration of Ragtime.” The wrestling match was the final event, probably because the matches were untimed meaning they could last for quite some time. This night’s match didn’t go too long but my grandfather once had a match that ran for several hours one night and was suspended until the following evening where the match finally ended after over two more hours of grappling.
It was just a wide open time. A young nation feeling its oats.
Of course, this wasn’t true for everyone. Women were still limited in their opportunities. They could not vote and for the most part were subjugated to minor roles in the work force. The nation was only three or four decades removed from the Civil War and while slavery was eradicated , black Americans were still fighting prejudice and suppression, struggling to find their own opportunity in a time when the Ku Klux Klan was taking root around the country. There was widespread poverty and disease and alcoholism. Work conditions were often appalling which led to the rise of the unions which brought about labor laws which removed the children from the mills and mines which were so common at the time.
In short, it was a tough but exciting time. Which brings me to the film below and the two images at the top of the page. This is a nearly 12 minute film of a streetcar jaunt up Market Street in San Francisco on April 14, 1906. Only four days later the fabled Earthquake of 1906 would destroy the city and leave over 3000 people dead. The two photos at the top show the before and after, the tower at the end of Market Street still standing in both. This film was a mystery for many years, the date lost in the fog of history. But careful research uncovered the date which made an already interesting film even more so.
Even though the journey is slow by today’s standards, it’s a dizzying ride with cars and people and horse-drawn vehicles all weaving and swerving in a chaos that is a little unnerving. I think it represents the time very well– fast-paced and a little dangerous. I watched and wondered how many of those people perished in the next week and what the survivors ended up doing in later days. Take a look and wonder for yourself.
God strengthen me to bear myself; That heaviest weight of all to bear, Inalienable weight of care.
All others are outside myself; I lock my door and bar them out The turmoil, tedium, gad-about.
I lock my door upon myself, And bar them out; but who shall wall Self from myself, most loathed of all?…
– Christina Rossetti
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The painting at the top, I Lock My Door Upon Myself, is from Belgian Symbolist painter Fernand Khnopff who lived from 1858 until 1921. The title is taken from a verse of a poem, Who Shall Deliver Me? (shown in part above), from Christina Rossetti, the pre-Raphaelite poetess whose brother, Dante Rossetti, was an influence on the work of Khnopff.
It’s a haunting painting, one that always makes me stop a bit when I stumble across an image of it. Perhaps it is the symbolist elements in it but for me it is probably the beautiful construction of forms and color that give the overall piece an almost abstract feel. Just a great image in so many ways.
I came across a video from the free educational series Khan Academy that offers a short and insightful exploration of the painting’s symbolism. Very interesting if you have five minutes or so.
I was scanning the archives for the blog and came across this entry from four years ago, written in the immediate aftermath of that year’s West End Gallery opening. It had the story of a young boy with a rare disease and a message that really touched me then and now. Thought it deserved another run today:
Well, the opening is over and the show continues to hang at the West End Gallery. Good opening. Talked to a lot of really nice people, many new to me. Many thanks to everyone who came out. You made the evening complete and I could not be more grateful.
That said, I was sure glad when the night was over. There comes a point near the end of an opening, especially in the aftermath of constantly promoting it by writing about it here, where I am really tired of talking about me and can’t wait for that moment until I don’t have to say anything to anyone.
So later that night, we came home and decided to quietly watch that night’s Jeopardy, a show I have watched intently since I was a child when Art Fleming was the host in the 60’s. Before it came on, I caught the end of the ABC Evening News and there was a story about their Person of the Week. It was a young boy, Josiah Viera, from central Pennyslvania who suffers from Progeria, an exremely rare (something like only 54 cases in the world) disorder where the child begins prematurely aging, most having a life expectancy of between 8 and 13 years. Josiah, now 7 years old, has the tiny body of a 90 year old, taking cholesterol and arthritis medications. He is 27 inches tall and weighs 15 pounds.
But Josiah doesn’t dwell on the hardships of his condition. Instead he concentrates on his passion, that thing that brings him sheer joy: baseball. He lives for the game, wanting to play it from the minute he wakes until the end of each day. He approached a coach at the local t-ball league in Hegins, PA and told him that he wanted to play in the games. They feared he might not survive more than a single game and indeed, after his first game, Josiah suffered a series of mini strokes and was hospitalized.
But he recovered quickly and his desire for the game was so strong that he was back after three weeks. The news of this little boy and the joy with which he played the game captured the hearts of the local folks and by the last game there were several hundred fans ( not your usual t-ball crowd!) all cheering him on and chanting his name. And as he stands on the bag at first base, which seems like a table under his small body, Josiah smile glows with the sheer and absolute joy of being safe.
Absolute joy. How many of us allow ourselves to feel that? Josiah’s time here is limited, as it is for all of us. Yet his life is not sadder for that knowledge. Instead he has somehow chosen to find joy in those few days, rejoicing in the moment instead of fearing the future or focusing on the life that might have been under different circumstances, things which too many of us allow to take over our lives.
Life is now. His pure joy is a lesson for us all. Life’s too short to not revel in those things that make us happy.
What is your joy and if it’s not the biggest part of your life, why is that so?
Below is the longer version of the story from ESPN on which the ABC story is based. It’s a beautifully done report. Have a great Sunday and again, thank you for everyone who came out Friday night– you brought me a little of that joy that I speak of.
2015 Update: Josiah is now 11 years old and still as much in love with baseball as ever. He is the an honorary bench coach for the State College Spikes, the St. Louis Cardinal’s Class A minor league team located in central Pennsylvania. He plays cards with the players before the game, gives the manager bits of advice on game moves and provides the team with much more than they could ever give him in return. He also went to spring training with the major league St. Louis Cardinal, getting to hobnob and even play a pickup game with their star players. Throughout it all, that joy sparkles and inspires. As one player said after going through a particularly tough game, “When I see that little guy across the clubhouse, I know I’ll be fine.”
There’s a great article from MLB.com that gives all the updates on Josiah. Click here to see it.
Well, the opening for my Home+Land show at the West End Gallery was Friday evening and went very well– just a perfectly wonderful night with plenty of people and lots of conversation. It was a pretty large crowd, especially for a summer opening, but it still was one that met my criteria for a good show: most of the attention was focused on the work on the wall.
I have been to plenty of crowded openings where the work is sometimes an afterthought and all the people there are facing inward in private conversations. For me, a good show is one that is outward focused, one where the eyes oriented to the wall. And even though there was a good number of people, it seemed to me that most were there for the work.
And that really satisfies me in some deep way and for that I would like to thank all of you who took time from your summer schedule to spend a little time to take a look at the work. I could not be more appreciative. And thanks to Linda and Jesse once again for hanging the show in a way that seems to bring it all together in the gallery. Again, I could not be more appreciative.
That said, it’s time for a Sunday morning music and this week I felt like something older and mellow and, for me, the voice of the late and great Sam Cooke can often fill that bill. This is a song he wrote that has been covered by many artists but his version always seems the real thing for me. It’s from 1962 and has very recognizable backing vocals from Lou Rawls. Here’s Bring It on Home to Me.
PS: The painting at the top is from the show and is 12″ by 24″ canvas piece titled Back to the Land.
Sunday morning.
Redtree Times 