I Can Fly

You found me

earthbound

picked me up

nurtured timid buds

kissed, coaxed

until they bloomed

into wings spread

wide enough to soar

But I am not the angel

you say I am

I am only a bird

not sedentary

enough to resist

the urge to migrate

passing every toadstool

and tree stump

in a passionate flyway

to your longitude

loving a season

until the next

staying until the air

bears just a hint of cool

Tess Kincaid

June 2011

image:  Endeavor, Lino Tagliapietra, Columbus Museum of Art

survivor mindset

Red Dog Running #3, William Hawkins, 1895-1990
Columbus Museum of Art

Whenever I visit the Columbus Museum of Art, I always like to stop in the gift shop on the way out and pick up some postcards of my favorite pieces.  This one has been on my desk since my visit last month. I love it's bright, quirky playfulness, the little fairies, and even the misspelling of "running".  Hawkins' style stems from what is described as his bold, optimistic "survivor mindset". It makes me smile. I'd like to think we are all survivors.

William Hawkins was one of the finest self-taught artists of the 20th century. He has had one-person exhibitions at the Museum of American Folk Art and the Columbus Museum of Art, and his paintings and drawings have been included in many important museum survey exhibitions of American Outsider and Folk Art at venues such as the New Orleans Museum of Art, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The National Museum of American Art, and The High Museum of Art, Atlanta.

Although Hawkins had only a third grade education, he was a bright student of life from his early days on a farm in Northern Kentucky until his last vital painting years in Columbus, Ohio. Hawkins began drawing pictures of horses as a boy while looking at photographs and engravings of horses that his grandfather owned. Hawkins worked hard and resourcefully at many trades including trapping, farming, horse-breaking, truck driving, horse painting, "flophouse" managing, and metal scrap dealing.

His dynamic, artistic style was forged from his optimistic, hard-charging, "survivor" mindset. His earliest known paintings from circa 1978 until 1983 have reductive, powerful decorative patterning, dynamic utilization of pictorial space, and iconic commanding forms which yield a purity of expression that is extraordinary. Hawkins' paintings from the middle to late 1980s have rich, visceral brushwork and more compositional complexity than his earlier works. Some paintings, such as Speckled Buildings, 1986, are outstanding, in their harmonious color arrangements, surface animation, and pictorial unity.

In several of the artist's middle and late period paintings, he began to incorporate collage and/or assemblage in his paintings. He occasionally utilized cornmeal to build up forms, in a sculptural manner, from the surface upon which he was painting. The artist's creative fusion of mass media advertisements, etc. with his uniquely rich paint handling and sculptural forms yields provocative and inventive aesthetic statements.

The artist also created a small but vital group of drawings throughout the last twelve years of his life. These works are distinguished by his clarity of vision, creative pictorial designs, and wry sense of humor. The highly personal lens of William Hawkins' vital soul is alive in all of his art.

Winter Sleigh, William Hawkins
(click to embiggen)

info borrowed from Keny Galleries

apron

Smoldering Fires, Clarence Holbrook Carter, 1904-2000
Columbus Museum of Art

Apron

      for Alice Pullen Hanna, 1914-1970



I sleep burrowed in gingham,
a cabbage roll swallowed

in a mix of stove grease
and her own warm

uncorseted scent,
unspoken balm,

quiet like the still
before a Dog Day storm.

Church hymns spoon
heat in the summer kitchen

and Hoosier light,
savory from the night sun,

shines from the back door
out through the front.



Tess Kincaid
May, 2011

penny for your thoughts

Believe it or not, this is a piece by Canadian sculptor Evan Penny.  He creates his disturbingly realistic figures with silicone, pigment, hair and aluminum.  Several years ago, I was lucky enough to see an exhibit of his work at the Columbus Museum of Art.  The skill involved here is mind boggling.  Penny's sculptures literally grab his viewers, stop them dead in their tracks.  Columbus has one of his larger than lifesize pieces, Back of Kelly, 2005, as part of their permanent collection. I recently saw it again, and snapped a few shots to share. The detail is astonishing, down to the blemishes, stray hairs and crusties behind the ears. Genius, in a very real way.

The acquiring of more information only makes things more complex and adds layers of uncertainty. The goal isn't realism; the byproduct is. --Evan Penny

Back of Kelly, 2005, taken by me April 2011 at the Columbus Museum of Art

Back of Kelly, detail, click to embiggen, if you dare

accidents of light

Just Married, 1957, Columbus Museum of Art

Last week, at my library branch, Ron Schick's Norman Rockwell Behind the Camera was displayed in one of the featured-book shelves. Rockwell is not one of my favorite artists, but his work is quintessentially American, so iconic, and recognizable. He was a master story-teller.

I picked up Schick's book, gave it a quick flip-through, then immediately added it to my stack. It is full of wonderful photos of the models Rockwell used for his paintings.

It is quite a treat to look into the faces of the real people we have all come to know and love through his legendary works. Rockwell never intended for his photography to be judged on their own, but they are actually works of art in their own right.



"There were details, accidents of light, which I'd missed when I'd been able to make only quick sketches of a setting.  A photograph catches all that."

My Columbus Museum of Art has two of Rockwell's pieces, Just Married, 1957 and Soda Jerk, 1953.  On a recent visit, I snapped a few shots to share with you.  In the reproductions, his work looks so smooth and fine, but when seen in person, it is amazing how thickly he applied the paint.

Soda Jerk, 1953, Columbus Museum of Art

Rockwell's son, Peter, was the model for the counter man in Soda Jerk.

"Before a model even attempts to pose for me, I tell him the story I want my picture to tell because I want him to understand what I am trying to do, what I am trying to convey. Then I get into the pose myself and show him how I think it should be done."  --Norman Rockwell

sloppy

February Thaw, 1920, Charles Burchfield

Main Street, Salem, Winter Day, 1917

Like most in the Midwest, we've had an unusually cold, snow-laden winter. I have loved every minute; breakfasting around the fire, furry hats, fat woolly socks, steaming homemade soups and the pristine monochrome view from my frozen manor windows. Everyone seems anxious for spring, but I dread the sloppy thaw. Main Street, Salem, Winter Day, 1917, by one of my favorites, Ohio surrealist Charles Burchfield, captures this winter perfectly.

Most of Burchfield's (1893-1967) works were inspired by the rural surroundings in his hometown of Salem, in northeast Ohio, many from his own backyard. Dynamically working with watercolor, his paintings have a broad, mystic quality I absolutely adore. Burchfield is regarded as one of the key figures in early American Modernism and one of America’s masters of watercolor. I make it a habit to look for his pieces when I visit my local Columbus Museum of Art.

North Wind in March, 1960-66

Orion in December, 1959

your willow or mine?

Kathleen and Monet's Weeping Willow, 1918, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth

Monet's Weeping Willow, 1918
Columbus Museum of Art

My bloggy friend, Kathleen of Easy for Me to Say, sent me this wonderful photo of her viewing Claude Monet's Weeping Willow, on a recent visit to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. I was thrilled to get it, but at the same time wondered, since I could have sworn Monet's willow painting was at my own dear Columbus Museum of Art. Well, as it turns out, Monet did a whole series of willow paintings, from 1918-1919 in homage to French fallen soldiers. His beloved gardens at his Giverny home were the source of his inspiration. Monet's gardens inspired many other artists since. Even while untended and overgrown between 1926 and their restoration in in the late 1980s, these gardens continued to cast their spell.

Since I've finished up my willow musical series, I thought it might be fun to do a little follow-up with "Willow in Art", so stay tuned.

lunch

One of my personal faves at the Columbus Museum of Art is George Tooker's Lunch, 1964, egg tempera on gesso panel.  Despite the lovely soft tones and overall quietness of the painting, it is striking, and for me, anyway, packs quite a punch. Lunch is an indirect reference to the contentious lunch counter sit-ins occurring across America in the 1960s.  Tooker’s figures all bear an uncanny resemblance to each other, silently eating their lunches, completely drained of the actual passions surrounding the issue.  Notice the lone African-American pictured in the center. You can feel the warmth in the glow of the lunchroom, and even though there is no connection between the diners, you can sense their collective unity.

George Tooker was born in Brooklyn. After graduating from Harvard in 1942, he joined the Art Students League, where he studied with Reginald Marsh, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and Paul Cadmus. Heavily influenced by Cadmus, Tooker became part of the Magic Realist circle of artists. At age thirty-one, Tooker’s first one-man show was held at the Edwin Hewitt Gallery in New York. His shows and exhibitions at major museums and galleries continued through the 1950s and 1960s. From 1955 to 1958, Tooker taught painting at the Art Students League, and in 1974 the San Francisco Palace of the Legion of Honor organized a retrospective of his work. He currently lives in Vermont.

To paint the figure as deliberately
and meditatively as does Tooker, is,
in a sense, to touch, caress, and care for it.

M. Melissa Wolfe

George Tooker: A Biography

This is a Theme Thursday post.