Here’s my latest entry into the Icon series, a 12″ by 12″ canvas piece that is titled Icon: Joe H. He is my 3rd great-grandfather and his name was Joseph Harris and he was born in the Lindley (the town named after our common ancestor, Eleazer Lindsley,who was among the first Icons) area south of Corning in 1833.
He led a fairly typical life for the time and place, serving in the Civil War and raising a family. He worked primarily as a blacksmith and a sawyer ( I have a lot of lumbermen in my family– maybe that’s where my affinity for trees comes from) in his early years, working for a number of years in the then booming timber business that was taking place in northern Pennsylvania and western NY. It was there that his wife, Emeline Whitney, died just a year or so after the end of the Civil War. Later in his life, he returned to the area of his birth, settling in as a farmer just over the border in Pennsylvania where he died in 1922.
That was about the extent of his life for me, at least what I could find of it in records. I did discover that he married his step-sister, Jennie, who was twenty years younger, as his second wife. But it was my research into local newspapers that gave me a better sense of him.
Looking at records gave no indication of anything but the basics but in his 1922 death notice printed in the Wellsboro Agitator ( I love the name of that paper!) the headline lists him as a “Skilled and Noted Musician.” It goes on to say that he had been the one-time Banjo Champion of the United States. He very well may have picked up the banjo from his Civil War experience as it’s popularity in the time after the war is often attributed to many people being exposed to it for the first time during their service. I could never find anything to document a championship which was no big surprise as it most likely occurred somewhere in the 1870’s or 1880’s and whatever group sanctioned the competition is more than likely no longer in existence.
But I was pleased to know that music played a big part in his life and I later found an item that confirmed this. It stated that his son, William Harris, was working as a musician in one of the oilfield boom towns in northern PA in the 1890’s when he tragically took his own life by shooting himself at the hotel where he was living. As is often the case, you find a lot of tragedy when you look backwards so it’s some consolation to know that there was a bit of music and joy mixed in there somewhere.
I did visit Joe’s gravesite a while back. It is a bare-boned and flat plot of land that sits next to a harsh little trailer park visible from the new interstate. Standing at his grave you looked into the backyard of several trailers, the kind of yards scattered with kids toys, spare tires and oil drums.
It made me a little sad but then, I guess a guy who lived through the Civil War, endured the death of his first wife and several of his children before him and lived to see the first World War, this wasn’t all that bad.
There is delight in singing, though none hear beside the singer. 
The painting above is titled Paradise-The Land of Men, Birds and Ships. It’s actually a mural that was painted on a building outside of Paris in 1950 by artists Friedensreich Hundertwasser and René Brõ. It was saved from demolition in 1964 although I have no idea where or in what condition it now stands. I’ve featured Hundertwasser’s work, with it’s rich colors and organic shapes, here on the blog a few times in the past. I like his work, I like this and thought it fit well with the song I’ve chosen for today’s Sunday Morning Music.
I don’t know how to start with this newest painting from the Icon series. When I started the series I wanted it to focus on the lives and stories of the everyday ancestors that make up my and many others’ family lines. But there ares some folks in these lines that are definitely not everyday people. Such is the case with this icon– she was already the subject of multiple icons before I even thought of painting her.
For her works in spreading the beliefs of the church as well, in actually building churches, Anna was made a saint in the Eastern Orthodox church. In fact, one of the feast days of St. Anna is next week on February 10th.
I wrote last year about a couple of places where my work has ended up in one way or another. Recently, I received some material from a couple of these places that show how my work is being used.
Sometimes I will get an image in my mind that seems all fleshed out and full. It’s just a matter of moving that image from the inner workings of my consciousness into the outer world of reality. Sometimes, it goes smoothly and the final painting matches that first thought of it.
Finding some sort of joy in one’s life might well be the answer to most of life’s questions. It nourishes us and gives meaning to the moments of our lives. It makes us want to face the new day.
Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.these
“Any great art work … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world – the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.”
Redtree Times