Lexington/Rockbridge Studio Tour: 10 to 5 April 21

When I heard that eleven artists and craftspeople would be opening their studios to the public, I thought a tour sounded like an interesting way to occupy a Saturday. I figured if I got started a little before ten, I'd be back home by 3:30 or 4:00. The brochure promised a 20-mile road trip.

I began on schedule, parking at the Lexington Inn Restaurant and running out to Thorn Hill Farm, where Bill Johnston has his pottery studio, number 11 on the brochure's nice map. I think 20 cars filled his lane. One of his assistants stamped my Studio Lotto Card (visit all 11 and you might win $300).

I viewed his and a guest artist's works, then aimed for number 10, another pottery studio, this one owned by a friend, Lee Taylor. A little road-side emergency, in a pine forest, began a day of crime. Then, I turned onto his road and committed a second.

What to do? By this time, I was sopping wet. I didn't have a towel. I decided, heck with the stupid sign.

Here he is. Darn, I didn't get a full body shot to show the kilt he was wearing, A kilt and a kiln?

Lee had two guest artists at his studio. Here's one. I realize the picture's not so great, but Kitty (Tilson) and I played violins a couple years together in the "Three Little Old Ladies Quartet." She's been making baskets for many years, but she didn't start this bunch until November. She said she began making one a day, then as time passed she got faster and faster. I hope I look that young when I'm over eighty.

Okay, here's how you get home when Buffalo Creek's too high. Check out the swinging bridge!

On the other hand, you've got to feel bad for these guys. They're not going to be grinding any flour until the creek's way up.

Now let me tell you how I cheated. Elizabeth Sauder said I could knock 7 miles off the trip if I ran through the woods instead of traveling the roads. (By the way, I entered this run on "Map My Run" (it's a website for runners), which shows that cutting off 7 still left me with 26 miles.) Forget what the brochure said. Here's the old road through the woods.

"Now why are you including this lousy shot?" says Virginia.

Because the shiny copper roof on that log cabin reminded me of the people who stopped to photograph our new roof several years ago. New copper roofs look like giant jewels.

Soon after that shot was taken, the sky turned gray and began making me even wetter. By Susan Harb's (number 6), I was completely soaked. As I walked into her gallery, she handed me about ten paper towels. Here's Thom checking out her mud brick oven. He has almost finished building a Pompeii brick oven at his place.

About ten 'til five I finally reached Gallery Number 1. As I left, Laurie told her husband, Craig, I ran the thing. "Nice job," he said, thinking she meant I'd been in charge of the Studio Tour. Nice job, whoever you are.

Togetherness

Karen and I sat on the back porch of our cabin yesterday, listening to Opossum Run. We thought about people elsewhere who walk miles each day to collect a little water to meet their needs. The time to pan for gold, if that time ever existed, has passed. Water has become golden.

As I mentioned in this year's Thanksgiving Day blog posting (immediately preceding this one, entitled "Thank You"), we're fortunate to be able to "make" Thanksgiving dinner. This is a result of a choice we made 17 years ago, after asking ourselves, "Is this really what we want to do until we retire?" We didn't realize then where we were heading, and I suspect that 17 years from now we'll look back at today and say we didn't realize in 2011 where we were headed.

Traveling always does this to me. Stepping outside our box forces me to look at our choices from a different perspective. As we walked around Manhattan, we didn't see many gardens or wellheads. We visited a small community garden in the Upper West End. Each participant had a few square feet, where growing potatoes or raising turkeys would be very hard. The only way they could "grow" a significant amount of food was to pay someone else to grow it for them. Enter, grocery stores and farmers' markets.

That's okay, I suppose, assuming the buying doesn't accompany an attitude that looks down on the labor and the places that make their food possible. Something is out of whack if we call farmers and other laborers names like "rednecks," sort of like the names given the slaves brought here to do the work white people thought was beneath them. These are the people who feed us.

We spent an afternoon art gallery-hopping in Chelsea. At first, I didn't know quite what to think of an exhibit of works by Robert Kinmont at Alexander and Bonin. A wooden box sat on the floor next to what presumably had been its contents, a small pile of soil, entitled "A Cubic Foot of California." Another work, entitled "Evidence," consisted of 127 willow forks, that is, forked willow tree branches. Near the entrance stood half of a hollowed-out log, clean and smooth. These and other pieces seemed like a tractor driving down Wall Street. Then I thought, yes, that's exactly what we need to see. We cannot, must not, live such specialized, compartmentalized lives.

"So are you going to drive a tractor down Wall Street?" asks Virginia.

I hope I don't have to.

Still Life

Finish Line

"What on earth is that?" says Virginia.

It's what I collected at the end of my run this morning, littering the roadside along the edge of our field. I decided it would make a nice still life. Several titles crossed my mind, including "Dr. P Rejected."

"Were you feeling rejected this morning?" says Virginia.

Not at all, nor was I feeling like a "doctor." The Dr. Pepper bottle struck me deepest because there it lay, barely touched. Who threw it and why?  

Maybe a rich man had seen soft drinks on the shelf at Tee Pees and bought a bag of a bunch of brands. After he mounted his Mercedes, he grabbed a bottle and took a sip. "Yuck," he said as he threw it out his window.

Perhaps a poor fellow had reached into his pocket and found barely enough coins to buy one bottle. He savored the first sip and another as he walked down the road, carefully screwing the cap on after each drink. "Oh no." He pretended to trip and set the bottle on the ground. A car stopped to give him a ride. "Close one," he thought, knowing the driver, his "fiancee," would have leveled him with a tongue lashing if she'd seen that he'd wasted money on a Dr. Pepper.  

"You're being too kind," says Virginia.

All right. Some slob threw the thing out his window with no thought, the same kind of attention he gives most of his life as he gripes about government spending, how much trouble he goes through to get his disability claims paid, and how seldom his wife cleans house. 

Did you know still lifes were popular in ancient Greek tombs because some people believed the subjects in a still life would become real with reincarnation?  May "Finish Line" or "Dr. P. Rejected" be the first thing our litterbug sees when he or she begins the his next life.

Keri, our Great Pyrenees Pup

Suspension of Disbelief

"Billy Elliot" (see previous blog post) did not disappoint. A show as good as this encourages the audience to practice something, write, compose, choreograph or whatever else one might wish to pursue or perfect. It also brings to life the "suspension of disbelief." For three hours, we're asked to believe -- that in a town where everyone sings and dances, its striking coal miners have no other talents for making money if the mine closes, and two of them think their son and brother should not waste time on ballet. I'm mostly kidding; no, we're asked to believe, for a few hours, in the fiction presented by actors for our enjoyment. We know we've entered suspension when a man sitting behind us sobs into his handkerchief and our own cheeks are damp.

Then the curtain falls, the house lights turn on, and we're reluctant to return to disbelief. Our toes try to point uncomfortably. Our mouths attempt to form British accents. Teachers from long ago float in the peripheries of minds. For moments, we regret canceling lessons and maybe we think about writing a check to a local arts organization.

By the next day, life has almost returned to normal.

"Pure silliness," says Virginia.

No, it wasn't silly at all. Maybe a thousand people joined to applaud a cast of talent, to invest an afternoon in something other than routine.

"I mean," says Virginia. "It's silly to leave it all behind. Dream a little, will you?"

Why Run Hellgate?

Why run Hellgate? I know some folks think it's crazy and can't imagine why someone would. One answer is the perennial "I guess you've got to be there" to understand.

I haven't done it yet, so I don't really know the answer. A previous winner of the run, Jason Schwartzbard, has written: "...those reasons that we share with acquaintances over cocktails at holiday parties only skim the edges of our reasoning....Just as the painter, dancer, mathematician or corporate executive creates, so does the runner. But while the painter, dancer, mathematician or corporate executive feel[s] both the joy of meeting the human need to create, and the pleasure of seeing some final product, the runner only has the former....So at those cocktail parties, the reasons that come out for running long distances in the woods tend toward values that are meaningful after the fact. But as I ran down that grassy road, a little more than half way through the race, a few minutes before sunrise, what drove me forward had nothing to do with pushing myself to new heights or being able to eat more pie the following week. What drove me forward was the transcendent satisfaction of creating my experience."

I touched on a similar idea in an earlier blog posting ("Ordinary People," December 26, 2009) -- the idea that artists, writers, dancers, and other creators must find satisfaction in the act of creation and not in the "final product."

"Oh, what I'd give to re-experience the event, itself," says Virginia. "Second, give me the memory, not the sterility of a recording."

Well, Virginia is a pro, one of the few who peaked in her profession, however briefly. As an amateur musician who enjoys performing, I hesitate to focus on the moment of performance. Musicians, like athletes, train for weeks, years, for their performances, and then can stumble because something takes a wrong turn -- maybe another musician's error, a broken string, a memory lapse, or an overheated room. I don't want my satisfaction to depend on the performance. The performance means little if I'm miserable practicing by myself or working with other musicians.

Likewise, Hellgate. I'd be disappointed if I didn't run the race. The moment when I cross the finish line will be a special moment. But -- race director, you may stop reading now -- I have already experienced an incredible amount of satisfaction before toeing the starting line, running alone in the forest in Fall colors and sunshine, dry leaves swishing at my feet, spying a white tail bouncing through the trees or a flock of turkeys lifting off, and being grateful my body parts are able to complain. The creative process can feel very good, good, not-so-good, not-so-bad, bad and very bad, but most of all creation feels.

Weeds

Today I resumed reading between seemingly endless lines of bureaucratzy, pulling no weeds except figurative ones.

For some reason, I remembered a deep sea fishing trip we took from Fort Lauderdale.  As we cruised through the Inland Waterway we passed a giant statute of a human's middle finger. "What's the story?" I asked the captain.  According to him, the owner had first installed a large statue of a naked woman.  When folks complained, he yielded and installed a bird instead.  The critics remained unhappy and even more irritated.

When we visited Florence a couple years ago, I waited an hour or so to view Michelangelo's David.  He's pretty big, I dare say bigger than the naked lady in Florida, and his picture is everywhere, even in respectable publications.  Yes, he's inside now, but that wasn't always the case, and as I understand it, the reason is not because the neighbors were upset.

Virginia pipes up, "I bet the sculptor of the naked woman wasn't as talented as Michelangelo.  We must protect our young from inferior artistry, don't you think?"

Oh, I get it.  Is that what those long lines were, outside the American Idol tryouts, demonstrators against the bad singers who didn't get past Simon but received a few seconds of national exposure anyway?

"Just a thought," says Virginia.

She's way too nice, that woman.

Going Gaga

Sometimes I wonder how many Lady Gagas reside among us, sharing their creativity with a chosen few.  Like her, a magazine might name them among the 100 "most influential people in the world" but for their avoidance of the limelight, fame and money.  Maybe they're as influential as Obama and Oprah, in a silent, clandestine sort of way.

Look at local advocates who attend meetings of school boards and government bodies, some of whom think now is not the time to cut back on education spending because our future will suffer if we do.  Of all the investments we make, educating our children should top the list, yet that is where we head first for budget cuts. Like the senior executives we love to hate, we allow short-term perspectives to prevail over long-term.  By the way, I'm thinking every road should be a toll road -- enough of transportation socialism!  It's also time to face the fact that the prices we pay for gasoline, propane, electric power and even water are much too low, failing to take into account their externalities (smog, oil spills, flushed antibiotics, etc.).  If we paid realistic prices for everything, I bet we'd have funds for education.

As for me, I'm too self-centered to sit for hours through public meetings.  Taking a cue from Lady Gaga, maybe I should show up in sculptured pants with a little replica of the Washington Monument protruding you know where.  Then they might listen to me read or sing a current-events poem (or have me arrested on some trumped-up charge). 

"How about an Iwo Jima on your head," says Virginia, "with the flag of course?"

"Maybe a Leaning Tower of Pisa," says the Joker, "tilting right, or left?"

Blog Theory

In light of New Year's Day approaching, I've been saying to Karen, "I wonder what 2010 will bring" so often she thinks my Chatty Cathy string has broken.

A friend said, "Now you have a blog, you must find something to say." I didn't ask, but I was curious. Perhaps he was suggesting I don't often have something to say, or that I may often have something to say but it's really nothing, or maybe that having a blog means I must find something to say more often even if it's nothing. Eckhart Tolle might say I'm wasting my time trying to guess what my friend meant, but he's wrong because what I'm thinking about is not what my friend meant. Rather, it's why people, and particularly me, write a blog.

For some reason, that question brings me to the perennial one: What is an artist? I like to think one of the differences between a real artist and an aspiring artist is the real artist doesn't care what others think of his work. He is so confident in his ability (or his lack of it, which technically is irrelevant) that he will do his art forever regardless of what others think of it. He is not arrogant; the fact that other people want his work does not influence his regard for his work, either that it must be good because they like it or bad because they like it.

Would an artist, that is a writer who thinks of himself as an artist, blog? Yes, no. I read somewhere once that blogging, by its nature, is stream-of consciousness. I think the author was wrong. Let's consider the idea a moment. Some artists work and re-work a piece. A writer might pile on a hundred drafts, a painting might be layered with oils. A blogger has that opportunity. He clicks on "New Post" and begins typing. Every minute or so, the software saves the work as a "draft." Whenever the blogger wishes, he can "Publish Post" or "Save Now" without publishing. This process clearly allows deliberate work. The poet who insists on sitting on a new poem for six months before exposing it could happily blog. He could gradually release his work in his accustomed manner, as if he were aging cheese or wine.

My choice is a happy (for me) medium. So far, I've tried to publish something each day, whether or not I'm completely satisfied with the product. I'm not a politician or aspiring to become one, so it doesn't matter if something I choose to publish one day "comes back to haunt me," not that I don't engage in censorship from time to time. I think the supply of violence and cussing is sufficient I needn't add to it.

"Yeah, I noticed you wrote 'manure' the other day," says Virginia, "you sanctimonious twit."