Social Isolation

Wade and Tripod 2015

Day 1 (3/21/20)

Where to start? In the last week our world has been turned on end. Social isolation has become the order of the day. Schools have gone online and everywhere there is a surreal, nagging uncertainty. The COVID-19 virus which was just identified four months ago has swept across the planet and changed life as we know it. I have decided to spend some of my isolation time going back and visiting some builds that I have made along the bike trail over the last twelve years. When I first started the Dolmen Project it was an attempt to exercise both my body and mind. I would ride out every morning and build structures along the bike trail and come home and blog about it. At first they were basic cairns of different sizes. We had seen them in Iceland and Norway and found them fascinating. I had the goal of building a hundred of them along the trail. It didn’t take long to realize this wasn’t going to happen since soon after building them they would get knocked down by either natural or human causes. After awhile I started expanding my repertoire to include other objects left lying around by the railroad. I started doing larger and more elaborate builds. Eventually my manifesto became that I could not use anything that was not found on the trail and that would not eventually return to its past state. The first couple of years there was a lot of material available. The railroad had left ties and hardware everywhere which provided a good base to work with. Then later they must have decided that they had value and came through and grabbed everything even the ones that were sculptures. After that I had to get more creative and do more foraging. The first couple years I also made sure I wasn’t caught building. I would go out early so that by the time it got busy I was home blogging and a new crop would seem to pop up overnight. These first couple blogs will go back and take a look at some of the different years and some of the challenges that presented themselves over the last eleven years.

Tripod, Early Incarnation 2011

A Question of Balance 2015

Limestone Cairn 2012

The Knight Build 2015

Water Cairn 2011

Winter Tripod 2016

The fish Slayer 2000

Grandma and Wade Fishing

Day 4 (7/7/19)

In a summer of bad weather, today was perfect. We decided to go with our son, daughter in law and grandson to Harrington beach for a walk. Just as we were about to start walking around the quarry lake we came across a downed tree that had the bark shredding off from it. I thought it would come in handy for an art project so I grabbed a bunch. Our grandson Wade peeled off a strip about a quarter inch wide by about four feet long. Before long he had found a stick and went about building himself a fishing pole. At first all he could find for bait was a leaf so he tied that on the end and we looked for a place to fish. Harrington quarry pond has all kinds of bass that you can see from looking over the edge. As we were fishing with the leaf somebody found a broken lure with a hook attached so we tied it to the end of the line. The fish seemed very interested in it. Then Wade found a bobber with a little bit of line on it. We tied the bobber on the end of the strip of bark with the line and the lure beyond that. I was surprised by how curious the fish were. Eventually one managed to get hooked and we hauled in a small pan fish. Wade was overjoyed at catching a fish and Grandpa was dumbfounded. What had started out as a flight of fancy ended in a successful fish story.

Quarry Pond

Nice Bass

Maybe not

Wades Fish

On Happy Fisherman

His Dad gives it a try

Look Mom No Beach

Getting ready to go home

Ruminations of a Dinosaur

Day 3 (3/25/19)

I started my first teaching job in 1981. Since that time I have taught at many levels and under many circumstances. Over the next year I would like to reflect on some of the things that have changed in education and some of the things that have remained the same. This is not a doctoral thesis, by any means, but the ponderings of a dinosaur.

 I did not go to Kindergarten. It was available but for whatever reason our mother decided not to send us so I was six when I started first grade. I sometimes wonder if we are doing the right thing by starting children in school so early. My grandson will be six this summer and already has two years under his belt, although one of those was only half days. I realize the economic reality of sending to children to school so early but wonder if it is best for their development. My brother and I spent our days building forts in the woods and pretending we were the latest TV characters or even the neighbor boys Richard and David, who were in High School and had horses. They were pretty much the coolest people we knew. When we were older we were Brains Benton and converted our woodshed into a crime lab. Now days it seems like even playtime is structured. I follow a Facebook page called “Play based Art” which is great but what about play based play. Play has become athletics and yet another structured activity. We seem to be in such a hurry to rush our children into the future. Currently there is a big push in schools to offer more and more college classes. In some cases students have many of their first year of college general studies done before graduating from High School. Again what is our big hurry? Many of the skills I learned for life came from my elective classes. Now, with all the required classes and Advanced Placement classes there is little room for electives. In many cases the elective classes that are available are so focused on specific technologies that they do little to teach the basics. Although we have children who are prepared for college, few are prepared for life. It doesn’t take a PhD to see that many of our students lack valuable everyday coping skills. As I said in the beginning I don’t have all the answers. If I did I wouldn’t be in the classroom, I would be inventing acronyms, writing books, collecting data and making all sorts of money. These are just the ruminations of dinosaur.

Spring Break on the Bike Trail

Three Builds

Day 2 (3/23/19)

After a couple of years without much activity on the bike trail Eileen and I decided to get an early start in 2019. We had no idea how much snow would be left on the trail but decided to go find out. There were areas where snow had drifted that we had to walk the bikes across but most of it was good. This time of the year is a great time to get out and build because the grass hasn’t covered all the building materials yet. We were not disappointed.  I started by building a cairn at the beginning of the trail. The only problem we encountered was the water. Many of the building sites were still quite saturated so we headed for higher ground. I wanted to check on the area we refer to as the sculpture garden. We were pleasantly surprised to find “Tripod” still standing although somewhat worse for wear. Most of the other builds were down. I set to work. It was wet and muddy but at least I didn’t have to worry about biting ants or mosquitoes. Soon after starting on Tripod I realized that with the soft ground I was going to have to do some stabilization. Finally, I managed to get everything set up without fear of it toppling at least right away. I spent some time restoring a couple of other builds before deciding to call it a day. I hope this bodes well for the rest of the year.  

Some Snow

Eileen walking her Bike

First build in 2019

Woolly Bear

Tripod still standing

We found a rock

Signs of Spring

In hiding

Building starts

A new one

Tripod rebuild

Pussy Willows

In Search of Christopher Robin

The Search

Day 1 (3/16/19)

After a very long winter the weather this morning was beautiful. Our son called to see if we wanted to head down to Harrington beach to do some hiking with his family. It didn’t take much prodding to get us to agree. They recently picked up a new little Boston terrier puppy, Moose, so it was a good opportunity to give him a chance to blow off some steam. It was our grandson Wade that had the most fun however. After being cooped up all winter he had to explore everything. It didn’t take long before his imagination started to run wild. Soon he and grandma had found a tree that looked like it could possibly have been Pooh’s house. Without going much further they found another one that just had to be Piglets. It was a perfect morning for exploring except perhaps for the slippery spots. Moose spent a lot of his time sleeping but did manage to do a bit of chasing around. As usual the beach offered another spot to explore. There was still some ice along the edges but there was enough area for walking. The park had made a lot of improvements last summer like a new shelter and stairs down to the beach. I hope we get more opportunities to explore this summer.

The Start

Deer

Exploring

A Tree in a Tree

First Cairn of the year

A beautiful day

First Ice Cairn

Second Ice Cairn

Looking North

Pooh's house

Piglet's

Puppy Kisses

The Renaissance

"Self Portrait" Last Elemental

Day 2 (12/30/2018)

The New Art started out as simple sketches in pastels and watercolors. Forty years later, most have been lost and only a few remain. It was in no means a quick development. For years I would go back to my roots and work on other things. I had graduated from college and for a couple of years worked on more traditional art but the idea was always there waiting for release with the flow of the swamp as a renaissance always in the back of my mind. Every once in a while I would go back and explore the possibilities more. The earliest sketches used both primary and secondary colors to represent the elements and forces of life. Yellow and orange represented the suns energy while blue and violet represented air and water.  Green and red represented the current of life. They were little more than abstracts of the flow of energy. Slowly they developed more and more imagery. With the imagery came more structure and the fragments started to take forms. In the end the last pieces were done with Prang oval pan watercolors using only the primary colors. I liked the glossy surface that was produced by the gum Arabic in the semi moist paints.  It eventually, like much of my early stuff, became tighter and tighter. The final piece was a self-portrait. At that point I realized how much time it would take to continue painting in that style. Later I would continue with the idea of directional flow but by then I was re-exploring my earlier attraction to airbrush.

"Rolling Landscape" A very early pondering

Early Elemental

Another Early Elemental

First Watercolor Elemental

Early Tree Elemental

Later Watercolor

In The Beginning

Metamorphosis 

Day 1 (12/21/2018)

I was just looking and realized that I had not posted one blog on here in 2018. I really don’t know where this year has gone. I have decided that I am going to do better in 2019.

The Dark Years

Lately, I have found myself pondering the origins of my art. It has been a long journey from a vague idea of what I wanted to do, in the beginning, to where it is today. Artists often speak of some loss, guilt or other profound insight as being the impetus for their art. I was never able to really claim anything like that. I like to think of my art as a celebration of life and everything involved. In the beginning, college years, I was fascinated with Intaglio printmaking. I have always been a good draftsman and found intaglio as a worthy outlet for those skills. At that time in my life, I found myself in an almost constant funk. The deeper I sunk the darker my art became and the darker my art became the more depressed I became in a constant downward spiral. One night I had an epiphany, if I could I could draw myself into melancholy, perhaps I could draw/paint myself out. I started searching for a new direction. Possibly because of my background I had always had a love of bright colors but the seventies were a time where everyone was preaching the gospel of earth tones. I had grown up in a swamp and my earth tones were different from theirs. Mine were the colors of flowers, birds and the new growth of spring. I came to realize the importance of the swamp to my overall being. The swamp was a renaissance. It was where all life flowed to be born again. This awareness became an important part of my new art. I started experimenting with color as representations of these elements and started weaving them into images.  

Cellular Awareness

House in the Tree Farm

Life

Relations in Nature

Social Parasite