Berkshires artzine promoting and supporting the visual and performing arts since 1994
JUNE 2020
THE ARTFUL MIND
DEIRDRE SULLIVAN Photography by Edward Acker Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
CAROLYN NEWBERGER www.carolynnewberger.com
617. 877. 5672
Playing for Time, watercolor, 22x30 inches "As I sit on my window seat and watch the rain fall, the wheel of time turns grindingly, painfully, slowly. We are used to running like hamsters on smaller, faster wheels, the wheels of work, of watching children and grandchildren grow, of birthdays and playdates, of meetings and dinners out, of the processions of holidays, of projects starting and completing, of semesters beginning and ending, of successive seasons bringing new sports teams, new activities, new entertainments and new responsibilities. Remove those inner wheels and we more fully perceive the slower pace of the outer wheels. Take the seasons, for example. I have never more fully felt how long it takes for spring to arrive. Beyond the turns of the seasons is the unhurried wheel of historical time, a wheel whose rotation we may overlook when we’re occupied with the swift revolutions of our personal lives.”
—Carolyn Newberger, “The Wheels of Time in Quarantine,” The Berkshire Edge, April 27, 2020.
MATT CHINIAN “Gas Stations and Parking Lots, Paintings of the Pandemic”
Virtual Show up soon!
#1600 Jay’s Pizza 4.24.20 16 x 18”
#1603 Stewart’s at Night 4.20.20 11 x 14”
mattchinian.com Studio open with social distancing by appointment email: mattchinian@gmail.com
#1593 Dollar General 4.16.20 16 x 20”
THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 1
THE ARTFUL MIND Art is freedom
JUNE 2020 VIRTUAL GALLERY / PREMIER BUY ART HERE ...5 CHIP JOFFE-HALPERN /PHOTOGRAPHY INTERVIEW BY HARRYET CANDEE...16 DEIRDRE FLYNN SULLIVAN / ARTIST PHOTOGRAPHY BY EDWARD ACKER INTERVIEW BY HARRYET CANDEE ...20 POETRY BY KATE BELL Like A River / for D.S. ...24
Down to the Dock (Monhegan Island, Maine) 11x14” Oil on panel
Sharon Guy sharonguyart@gmail.com (941) 321-1218 https://www.sharonguyart.com
ELIZABETH CHECHE Surrealism in Portraiture Interview by Harryet Candee ...26 ASHLEY YANG-THOMPSON / Miss Expanding Universe Interview by Geoffrey Young ...30 CAROLYN NEWBERGER Art from In and Out of the Forest Interview by Harryet Candee ...38 RICHARD BRITELL / FICTION Jason & His Grandmother / Ch. 9 ...44
Lily of the Valley
Mary Carol Rudin www.mcrudin.com 2 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
Publisher Harryet Candee Copy Editor Marguerite Bride Third Eye: Jeff Bynack Advertising and Graphic Design Harryet Candee Contributing Writer: Richard Britell Photographers: Edward Acker, Tasja Keetman, Sam Backhaus CALENDAR LISTINGS and ADVERTISING RATES, please call 413 - 645 - 4114 artfulmind@yahoo.com issuu.com instagram FB FYI: ©Copyright laws in effect throughout The Artful Mind for logo & all graphics including text material. Copyright laws for photographers and writers throughout The Artful Mind. Permission to reprint is required in all instances. In any case the issue does not appear on the stands as planned due to unforeseeable circumstances beyond our control, advertisers will be compensated on a one to one basis. All commentaries by writers are not necessarily the opinion of the publisher and take no responsibility for their facts and opinions.
Vol d’Oiseau, Bird Flight View 24 x 36” Oil on canvas 2020 Impasto work Pontoosuc Lake on a windy, foggy morning
GHETTA HIRSCH website: ghetta-hirsch.squarespace.com instagram: @ghettahirschpaintings Text or call : 413. 281. 0626
MARK MELLINGER
LARRY FRANKEL
Red Lilly, Photography, 2020
Arshile Gorky with Maro Gorky on his Shoulders and Andre Breton. Roxbury Connecticut April 1945 Collage, acrylic and pencil 2020 20" x 16"
100 North St Pittsfield Painting - Collage - Construction 914. 260. 7413 markmellingerart.com markmellinger680@gmail.com
Larryfrankelphotography.com Larryfrankel@me.com Cell 914.419.8002
THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 3
ELEANOR LORD
FRONT ST. GALLERY
Painting by Kate Knapp
Landscape, Reflections on The Berkshires, pastel
Painting classes on Monday and Wednesday mornings 10-1pm at the studio in Housatonic and Thursday mornings 10am - 1pm out in the field. Also available for private critiques. Open to all. Please come paint with us!
visit:
www.Eleanorlord.com
Gallery hours: Open by chance and by appointment anytime 413. 274. 6607 (gallery) 413. 429. 7141 (cell) 413. 528. 9546 (home) www.kateknappartist.com
Front Street, Housatonic, MA
CHRISTOPHER MALCOMSON / VIRGINIA BRADLEY
SIGN 1, 24”X 21”, OIL ON PAPER
www.chrismalcomson.com
Studio Visits by Appointment 4 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
LANDING 5, 40” X 36”, OIL ON CANVAS
www.virginiabradley.com www.instagram.com/virginiabradleyart/ 234 Long Pond Road Great Barrington, MA
JUNE 2020 • Premier
Welcome to The Artful Mind’s
Virtual Gallery JUNE ARTISTS: CLAUDIA D’ALESSANDRO LARRY FRANKEL SHARON GUY GHETTA HIRSCH JOHN HOUSEMAN MARK MELLINGER JENNIFER PAZIENZA JANET PUMPHREY MARY CAROL RUDIN
Buy art and enjoy life!...
THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 5
CLAUDIA D’ALESSANDRO
Water Garden 16 x 24” $225 Manet’s Tree 20 x 30” $225
Pelican Squall 24 x 30” $225
CONTACT:
cdalessandro26@gmail.com https://www.dalessandrophotography.com 413-717-1534
Liquid Sky 24 x 30” $225 6 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
LARRY FRANKEL
Red Lilly 2020 11 x 17”
Olive Tree 2020 11 x 17”
$750
$750
CONTACT: Larryfrankel photography.com
Larryfrankel@me.com Cell 914-419-8002 Lillies and Butterflies 2020 11 x 17”
$750 THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 7
SHARON GUY
Paradise 11 x 14” Oil $400
Down to the Dock 12 x 12” Oil $400
Summer Sunlight 12 x 12” Oil $400
CONTACT:
sharonguyart@gmail.com https://www.sharonguyart.com 941-321-1218
8 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND VIRTUAL GALLERY
Eastern Shores 8 x 10” Oil $400
GHETTA HIRSCH
Bushes Rising 2020 5 X 7” oil and wax medium on wood panel $250
Interconnected 2020 9 X 12” oil and wax medium on wood panel $400
Crush Time 2020 8 X 8” oil and wax medium on wood panel $350
Fenêtre 2019 10 x 10” oil and wax medium on wood panel $400
CONTACT:
Ghetta-Hirsch.squarespace.com Instagram@ghettahirschpaintings Brambled 2020 8 X 8” oil and wax medium on wood panel
Text 413-281-0626 $350 VIRTUAL GALLERY THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 9
John Houseman Trio
Gouache on illustration board
$1325
John Houseman Nowhere Fast
John Houseman Inner Being 10 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
Gouache on illustration board
VIRTUAL GALLERY
Gouache on illustration board
$1750
NFS
JOHN HOUSEMAN
Blue Eyes Gouache on illustration board
$1750
The Secret Gouache on illustration board
$1050
CONTACT:
john-houseman.artistwebsites.com Hookah Gouache on illustration board $1950
VIRTUAL GALLERY THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 11
MARK MELLINGER
Bacillus 2019 Acrylic and collage 12 x 12” $245 Untitled 2019 Acrylic and collage 20 x 16 $750
In Accordance Collage and counterfeit lithograph. 2018 $900 Bottles acrylic 2019 24 x 18” $1100
CONTACT:
www.markmellingerart.com markmellinger680@gmail.com 914-260-7413 12 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
VIRTUAL GALLERY
JENNIFER PAZIENZA
Square 3, 2019 Oil on canvas 8 x 8”
$300
Square 4, 2019 8 x 8” Oil on canvas
$300
CONTACT: https://www.instagram.com/jenniferpazienza/ https://www.facebook.com/jenniferpazienzaartstudio/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiqXBQdVAQ0
www.jenniferpazienza.com VIRTUAL GALLERY THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 13
JANET PUMPHREY
Walk in the Fog custom sized, contact Janet for details
Cashmere, Cologne, and White Sunshine Photograph printed on archival paper 15 X 21” $600
Provincetown
Photograph printed on archival paper 30 X 42” $900
CONTACT: www.PumphreyLaw.com
www.JanetPumphrey.com
Charles River Bridge - Prague 14 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND VIRTUAL GALLERY
Photograph printed on archival paper, 16 X 24” $500
MARY CAROL RUDIN
Lily of the Valley Oil on board 12h x 16w” $300
Blue Clouds at Sunset Oil on canvas 12 x 24” $450
Moon and Clouds Oil on canvas 12 x 24” $450
CONTACT: mcrudin123@gmail.com www.mcrudin.com Sunset in the West Oil on canvas 12 x 24”
$450
VIRTUAL GALLERY THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 15
Chip Joffe-Halpern Photograph Saturday Night in July
Chip Joffe Halpern Photograph Corn Stand
16 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
Prague
CHIP JOFFE-HALPERN PHOTOGRAPHY Interview by Harryet Candee Chip, what were some of the reasons you decided to become a photographer? Chip Joffe-Halpern: When I moved to the Berkshires after graduate school in Albany (Master’s Degree in Social Welfare) I fell in love with the landscape of Berkshire County and I wanted to capture it in photographs. Then I got married and we had two children and I started to photograph them. I had an early exhibit titled “Rebecca, Noah, and Friends.” That can be intrusive, though. Lucky for them I started photographing for the former North Adams Transcript. When I was oncall as a photographer, I might have to go out at 3:00 in the morning and photograph firemen putting out fires. It was fun being a newspaper photographer, this included free film and being part for the community. How much time in your life does photography take up? Chip: It depends on the time of year and how comfortable it is going outside to take photographs. Now I photograph a couple of hours a day. When the weather is warm, I take my camera and tripod
out at night on our hill in Williamstown. It’s beautiful at 10:00 at night with my camera and tripod on our hill photographing the night sky. How have you separated, or put into categories the works you have done for personal use and for journalistic use? Chip: Works for personal use is about love: love of landscape and love of family. As a grandfather, I try not to be too intrusive, because the camera can be annoying. The writer Calvin Trillin once said that being a grandparent is the only thing in life that really is everything it’s cracked up to be. I don’t want to ruin it with my camera. Tell us about the cameras you use? What kind of printing takes place on what kind of paper? Chip: I use a Canon EOS camera, it is compact and easy to use. I like Epson Ultra Premium Photo Paper Glossy. For night photography, a sturdy tripod is necessary. When I photograph at night at the side of the road, sometimes people will stop their cars and ask me if I’m all right. It’s unusual to see someone on a hill at 10:00 at night with their
camera and tripod. Tell us about some of the challenges you confronted with taking photos. Chip: Now, the challenges are solely the weather. When I was a newspaper photographer, and that was many years ago, you had to be careful. That depended on the situation, I encountered. Who would you say is a profoundly amazing photographer of the 20th century and why? Who has been your mentor? Chip: I feel Joel Meyerowitz and Ansel Adams are profoundly amazing photographers of the 20th century. My work is nothing like their work. The photographer who has personally inspired and helped me is Eileen Counihan. Eileen’s night photography is beautiful, and she has taught me a lot! Tell us about a day in the life of Chip, please. Chip: Now I am retired, so I have too much free time on my hands. We are lucky that our daughter, son-in-law and two wonderful grandchildren live down the road. Continued on next page... THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 17
Chip Joffe Halpern Photograph Reservoir
Chip Joffe Halpern Photograph
18 • APRIL 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
Chip Joffe Halpern Photograph North Adams
One night I took our granddaughter out at night to photograph the night sky and the stars, it as such a joy and I look forward to doing that again. Your wife is an artist so you have said. Can you tell us a little about her and her work? Chip: Ellen is a mixed media artist who has studio in North Adams. She has been an Art Therapist and Art Teacher. She has exhibited her work throughout the Berkshires and New England. She tries to playful and her paintings are based on her sketchbook observations. Her web-site is joffearts.com Have you ever jointly worked on a piece of art? Chip: We critique each other’s work. She has taught me a lot about composition and has inspired and encouraged me in my work. Has the Corona virus days affected life as a photographer? Chip: I can’t say the Corona days have affected me too much. I am looking forward to warmer days and nights so I feel more comfortable going out on our hill with my camera and tripod. At this point in life, for you, what have you actually come to the conclusion of that makes sense of everything? Chip: At this point in my life I am appreciative of every moment. The blues singer Bonnie Raitt once said “life gets more precious when there is less of it to waste.” Being 70 years old, being retired and not being consumed with anxieties of work, I understand that now. With all your photographs you have taken, what are some of your plans for them? Chip: I hope to have more exhibits locally in Berkshire County. Harryet, thank you so much. You have made me think and want to go out photographing more! Thank you, Chip!
Chip Joffe-Halpern Photograph Charles Bridge, Prague
THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 19
Clark Art Institute Williamstown, MA
DEIRDRE FLYNN SULLIVAN ARTIST / TEACHER Interview by Harryet Candee
Photography by Edward Acker
What is it like to balance so many venues in the arts? Also, can you tell me about the meaning of your given name? Deirdre Flynn Sullivan: It’s challenging, exciting, and always stimulating. I am named for the female hero of the Celtic legend Deirdre of the Sorrows. It’s part of the Irish tales out of the Ulster Cycle of legends.
would have been our fifth consecutive year. As a member of the steering committee for the festival I would have been very busy working with our team and directors, Gail and Phil Sellers, to create another glorious year. The only thing the Coronavirus has not affected is my daily practice of making art from photographs and writing either poetry or essays.
and teacher of writing so I identify with the Renaissance.
What are you working on now, and how has your life changed since the Corona Virus began? Deirdre: Some of my work is currently included in a group show at the Whitney Center for the Arts in Pittsfield, MA. but no one can view it due to the state of emergency. I play the part of the Faerie Queen for the Berkshire Mountains Faerie Festival but the festival has been postponed to June 19th, 2021. This
And you are a Renaissance girl? These days we all wear many hats. Deirdre: The Renaissance mind and approach to living refers back to that 15th and 16th century world of exploration and discovery. Artists were not always limited to just one medium. The humanist philosophy embraced all things new and diverse in some ways reflecting later modernism and the 20th century concept that art should be the shock of the new. I am a visual artist, actor, writer,
It’s mind boggling how many things we have scheduled are on hold. When things are back to normal, how will you decide what to do first with your art? I suppose teaching would be the easiest to resume? Deirdre: I just found out that my summer class has been canceled but I am slated for two classes in the fall. I have been an adjunct faculty member at Berkshire Community College for the past 12 years. I was asked if I would like to teach there
20 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
What do you visualize happening around the world in about a year from now? I can only hope that around the world there is social improvement, a deeper sense of compassion, and a greater respect for the importance of the arts.
Deirdre Flynn Sullivan Blue Shades Photograph
and so every semester since fall 2008 I have been hired to teach composition classes so I hope it continues. I share my art on Facebook every day so that involves the public. I have three pages Deirdre of the Arts; Define Your Terms: Americana Music from Roots to Punk; The Scene: From the Renaissance to Hollywood and I am a team member for the Berkshire Mountains Faerie Festival page. I also have two groups ARTSPEAK: Artists Networking in the Berkshires and Beyond and Children’s Literature and Young Adult Fiction: From Picture Books to Novels. All of my pages and groups have been up and running for ten years on Facebook. I share art from around the world, links, music, films, events, and more each day. It’s so much of a Food for Thought era we are in. I think we will be frantically creative this time next year, sooner I hope! How are you preparing for your next project? Deirdre: I am working on a book of essays and a fantasy novel that I am illustrating with my own art. I am interested in knowing about your portraiture work. Tell us all about it. It’s dreamy, creative, fun, sensitive, theatrical, poetic! Is this a body of work you are obsessed with doing? Deirdre: I stumbled into portraiture via the cell phone technology. I have been an artist, actor, and writer since childhood. My major at the University of Michigan was Comparative Literature and Art. I studied filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute and art at the Chicago Art Institute. I have an open-minded approach to how technology can
assist, enhance, and inspire the artist. My life is rather monastic. I have been a widow for 27 years, had one relationship which ended twelve years ago, and have been utterly alone ever since. There’s nobody here except me. I don’t wear make-up, I get dressed in the morning and don’t look in a mirror all day but I use myself, all the aspects of who I am as an artist to explore storytelling and poetry in my portraiture. Frida Kahlo Rivera, Cindy Sherman, and Francesca Woodman have inspired my work but mostly, it comes from being alone but not lonely. What do you find to be most challenging for you working with this thematic venue in photography? Deirdre: To not be redundant. To be fresh, innovative, and new in each work. Some are more successful than others. I don’t set out with a plan. I point, trust, look, and make. Describe to us the techniques you use to achieve a self portrait? Deirdre: It depends. I use my cell phone. I use photo techniques via PicMonkey and PhotoMania. I see the story in the image and seek to reveal it through the process of trying different filters, devices, colors, etc. to create variations from one photo. I want the self to become someone else, like an actor becoming a character. What criteria do you give yourself in order to accept a piece into your portfolio of work? What do you strive for? Deirdre: That I like it. Even though it might be a sad work in terms of content it makes me happy
as an artist which is the highest praise I give anything in the world of art. It makes me happy. Working with your face as the subject, have you discovered what you love and not love about the details and the face as a whole source for expressiveness? Deirdre: I like to be surprised. I can do 50 variations from one photo. The theatre training, and by the way, I have taught theatre classes, too, has taught me to use all the tools in the arsenal of my life to create a viable character. Emotional, mental, physical, all of these are brought out to play in the creation of my images. If the eyes work I use them and I discover through the process of playing with the photograph the story it has to convey. Each one is unique. Are you documenting time and age and history with your portraits? Deirdre: Not purposefully. Certainly not my own life. An image can look like something out of the Middle Ages or 1940s Hollywood or contemporary or timeless. I am not officially aware of any documenting. How do you then figure out how and what poetry to add onto an image? Deirdre: I just feel it. The image compels my metaphors. How are the ways you found yourself supporting other artists and their work? I have always been a collaborative artist. Actors work as part of a cast and team. Filmmakers do as well. Continued on next page... THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 21
Flames
Lions
Dawnlight
Dragon
ART Photography by Deirdre Flynn Sullivan
I have always admired both co-operative and supportive systems in the arts. Many of us are volunteers, grassroots, non-profit. In my experience, the best and most confident artists are generous. If someone wants to buy my art, they will. If they don’t, they won’t. But hey, wouldn’t it be great if they bought my friend’s work? Success in the arts means working with people. It’s natural for me to do this via my community, social media, and the art scene. Over the past 26 years I have been the director of a couple of galleries, worked with theatre groups such as the Town Players of Pittsfield, and the Berkshire Mountains Faerie Festival to name a few. Seems like you were born a creative child. What was your childhood like? Deirdre: My parents met in a play called The 22 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
Shoemaker’s Holiday at Loyola University in Chicago where they were both students. They raised six children to love the theatre, literature, and the arts. I am the oldest child and was dedicated to making pictures, being in plays, and writing stories since kindergarten days. I always knew that I was an artist. I’m guessing you have a good visual memory as well. What can you remember from the earliest moments of consciousness? Can you put that into words? Deirdre: The light on the platform of an elevated train in Chicago. I would say the effect light had on surfaces was something I was always conscious of everywhere. A wall, the ground, the waves of Lake Michigan lapping onto wet sand.
What are your dreams like? Deirdre: Dreams are great pathways to storytelling. They speak in figurative language riddles. As a teacher, you try to instill many things. Inspiration, skill, expressiveness, playfulness, eye and hand coordination, etc. What do you enjoy about teaching? Deirdre: Being egoless. Being the vehicle through which important knowledge is shared. being the guide in a symposium of discussion. Seeing my students proud of their work. Hearing them laugh. Learning from them. How did theatre enter your life? Deirdre: I was raised doing theatre exercises such as pantomime, breathing, enunciation, scene work. I went to theatre classes from the age of
“Deirdre” Photograph by Edward Acker Williamstown, MA 2020
seven and acted in plays and films throughout my life. Who was your mentors and for what principle in acting did you find works best for you? Deirdre: Stanislavsky. My acting teacher at the University of Michigan turned me on to the work of Sandy Meisner. I love the teachings of Ute Hagen. Stella Adler, too.
gain use of equipment, space, and the support of fellow artists. Berkshire County needs an art school style center. Classes, equipment, space, and the support created and sustained by artists. If you had five miles of Berkshire land, what would you do with it? Deirdre: Build the Berkshire School and Center for the Arts.
Where do you get your inspiration from to keep going every day? I believe, we have endless energy because its in our spirit. Without much effort, we glide through the creative realm, like elves in dreamland, waiting for the next flower to jump upon. So, what would be your worst enemy? Deirdre: Yes, I am fueled by uncanny energy. My worst enemy would be to give up, to get too tired, to listen to the naysayers and quit.
If you were to relive a time in your life or a period in history, when would that be, and why? Deirdre: I would want to be a time traveler and pop into every era. To savor and to disappear.
What do you find Berkshire County needs? It has so very much to offer, but what do you think it needs? Deirdre: A real center for artists to share, show their work, and be supported. All ages, all socioeconomic backgrounds, all disciplines. My drawing instructor at SFAI (San Francisco Art Institute), the sculptor, Bill Geiss told his students that we weren’t there to learn to be artists, the institute already knew we were, we were there to
What is your favorite place in the Berkshires? Deirdre: I never have favorites. But a friend wrote to me a few years back and he said, “Deirdre, you live in beauty.” I do live in a quiet, wooded, naturally beautiful place in South Williamstown and feel wildly blessed.
What is it you want people to know about you? Deirdre: That I am an artist, a supporter of fellow artists, and an active participant in helping the arts thrive both locally and globally.
Do you have a favorite film? Deirdre: I am terrible at playing favorites. However, to give you an idea of how thoroughly I
love film as art I will tell you that sometimes to help me relax into sleep I will think of all of my favorite directors by country of origin. Fellini; Visconti; Pasolini; Bergman; Truffaut; Buñuel; Polanski, Malick; Ford, well, you get the idea. What art material have you not worked with yet, but would love the chance to learn and explore? Deirdre: Clay. Sculpture. When do you have time to just take a hike and meet up with friends? Deirdre: Normally, I work out daily at Planet Fitness and hike in the woods, teach my students in a classroom, dance at a dance studio once a week, and meet with team players for planning and or ganizing the Berkshire Mountains Faerie Festival. Now it’s just reduced to a daily walk; trying to help my students finish their coursework via technology; dancing when I feel inspired; and waiting for 2021 when the faeries will return to frolic and create magic in the ‘Shire once again. What would you like to say to complete our interview, Deirdre? Love the arts with all of your hearts! Thank you, Deirdre!
THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 23
PROVINCETOWN PHOTOGRAPH PRINTED ON ARCHIVAL PAPER, 30 X 42” ART COLLAGE 1962 NFS
MARK MELLINGER Sometimes a curse like this pandemic has small blessings attached. Freed from hours of commuting between work in NYC and homes in Yonkers and Pittsfield, I have time to do art. That said, I find the malaise taking away much of the energy needed to use that freedom. In the '60s, I went to Cooper Union Art School and then worked in commercial art and photography. Later I returned to college and careers in bio research and ultimately, psychology. While continuing my practice of psychoanalysis, I spend free moments in my Pittsfield studio. Free also from any dream of fame or fortune, at 75 I can indulge any curious whim in my artwork. I do, nonetheless, appreciate when someone can connect to it. Mark V. Mellinger, PhD - 100 North St. Room 404, Pittsfield MA 01201; markmellinger680@gmail.com / 914-260-7413
LILY OF THE VALLEY, OIL ON BOARD, 12H X 16”W
JANET PUMPHREY
MARY CAROL RUDIN
Janet Pumphrey is a local fine art photographer who lives and works in Lenox. While photography is a representational medium, Pumphrey moves beyond the inherent realism in traditional photography to see the world in a new and more creative way. She appreciates the ability to manipulate photographs through the artistic imagery available both in-camera and in post-processing, turning what was a realistic photograph into a creative, often abstract work of art. Her cityscapes and landscapes are at times painterly and impressionist and at times stark, reflective, and architectural. Janet Hetherwick Pumphrey, Esq. - 45 Walker Street, Lenox, MA 01240; 413-6372777; www.PumphreyLaw.com; Photography website: www.JanetPumphrey.com
Like A River for D.S.
The COVID pandemic is a difficult time for everyone. We are all thinking about the impact it has on all the people and things we love. I know I am among the lucky ones. I can be in the Berkshires where being outside and breathing fresh air and having plenty of space for social distancing is always available but particularly now is a blessing. This painting, "Lily of the Valley, Return of Happiness" is my idea of hope. The attribute of happiness is not mine; it comes from the books of Floriography. As far back as the 15th century in Turkey flowers replaced words to express forbidden feelings. These books were also very popular in Victorian England and the United States. Even today we attach meanings to flowers; red roses are still a romantic expression of love. I see this little Lily of the Valley struggling out of a crack in the pavement. The pavement represents this bleak time, and the Lily represents hope and recovery. MC Rudin - mcrudin123@gmail.com / www.mcrudin.com
I The sages say rivers lead back to the beginning, late winter birth being one with the fire in the sky. How easy to get lost in the unexpected currents, round rocks and the high white water that can sweep one away. Is it true that every Buddhist knows the lessons of form and formlessness, loss and love - the long journey that begins and ends in the river? II At times I think our friendship is like the river, not sure where its starts or ends high mountain headwaters- you so wild, free and so far awaywhere are you going, what’s under the surface, is it safe to follow a current so swift, so ambiguous? Or is there a choice, for I have always shared with you a love for the colors in the cave the sound of cottonwoods in the morning wind, and the mystery of time caught in the copper color of the river, the terra cotta flame.
By Kate Bell
24 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
Prepared food menu to take out: www.elixirgb.com
KATE KNAPP
HAND-MADE BY MONICA BOSSINGER
SYBLE, WATERCOLOR
LILA + KANE
MARGUERITE BRIDE
FRONT ST. GALLERY
Diverging from the ever-growing cadre of shiny new products feels good. Besides, there's a hint of intrigue in reinvented things especially when coffee is involved. A stint writing for a fair-trade company in California led me here. I pitched the owner, an ex-Wall Street guy, the idea of these coffee bean bags I spotted on Pinterest. He works with artisans in South America’s coffee growing regions, thought it would be a natural fit. After Great Barrington banned plastic shopping bags, I searched for an eco-friendly option with style. There were very few outliers worth plucking amid the flood of mass-produced varieties. I caved and purchased a coffee bean bag knock-off on Amazon. The straps, made of industrial nylon, were too broad. The fabric was unnatural. The tote never carried a green coffee bean in its life. I shared my idea with a GB shop owner; she suggested I make the bags myself. Visits to New York and Massachusetts roasteries yielded dozens of coffee bean bags - complete with dust and raw beans from the world’s coffee-growing regions (the bean belt between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn). I started designing, met a local seamstress, and we began making prototypes. Lessons ensued including how to properly wash burlap to tighten the weave and keep the plantation’s print from fading. Walk into our workspace, and you're bound to step on a coffee bean. It’s a daily reminder that our bags have a history - hailing from countries like Costa Rica, Argentina, and Honduras. And as far as the African continent. For life outside the nine to five, we offer Inge Farmer's Market Tote, Stephanie CrossBody, Nina Everyday Handbag, and Laura Carryall – a vegan option debuting late spring. Each one of a kind handbag comes with a hand-carved spoon made by Kenyan artisans. To honor the important roles women play in the production of coffee, Lila + Kane donates a portion of every sale to the International Women's Coffee Alliance (IWCA). Monica Bossinger : www.lilaandkane.com, 413-429-6158 , @lila_and_kane
ORIGINAL WATERCOLORS
Pastels, oils, acrylics and watercolors…abstract and representational…..landscapes, still lifes and portraits….a unique variety of painting technique and styles….you will be transported to another world and see things in a way you never have before…. join us and experience something different. Painting classes continue on Monday and Wednesday mornings 10-1:30pm at the studio and Thursday mornings out in the field. These classes are open to all...come to one or come again if it works for you. All levels and materials welcome. Private critiques available. Classes at Front Street are for those wishing to learn, those who just want to be involved in the pure enjoyment of art, and/or those who have some experience under their belt. Perfect if you are seeking fresh insight into watercolors, and other mediums. Front Street Gallery – Front Street, Housatonic, MA. Gallery open by appointment or chance anytime. 413-528-9546 at home or 413429-7141 (cell) www.kateknappartist.com
Life has become so very serious and actually scary lately. Exhibits and lessons cancelled, no visits to museums or galleries. Of course, there is always virtual, but sadly, that is only a weak substitute for the real thing. Like mostly everyone, my livelihood has been impacted. I’ve been missing my students and missing the hectic “fun” of prepping for the “show” season”, so I decided it would be good for you and for me to lighten up and have some fun. But how to do that???? That was my thought process in March and then it came to me out of the blue…. Naked Puppies! Who doesn’t love their dog? While dog-less at the moment, I always had a dog at my side, and I know the love of a pet. So I decided to paint man’s (woman’s) best friend….simply, inexpensively, happily. I call this new series “Naked Puppies”….why “naked” you say? Because I love seeing dogs without collars or other human imposed accessories… just plain beautiful pups. So when my teacher asks me to write an essay about what I did during the pandemic of 2020, I will write that I was surrounded by a bunch of happy canine models while sheltering in place in my basement studio. If you are interested, be in touch. And of course, I am also painting house portraits and taking on other commissions. Marguerite Bride – 413-841-1659 or 413442-7718; margebridepaintings.com; margebride@aol.com; Facebook: Marguerite Bride Watercolors.
artfulmind@yahoo.com THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 25
Finnigan’s Boat Ride
ELIZABETH CHECHE SURREALISM IN PORTRAITURE Interview by Harryet Candee
All of your paintings depict images of the ‘female’ icon. How do you relate to them and what do they share? Elizabeth Cheche: Everything I paint is a self-portrait in one way or another, also, there is a surrealist narrative within each painting, and a stage-like setting as well. I love the theatrics of a stage! I would say this is what ties them all together. My stories unfold in so many ways, a lot of my ideas come when I’m out walking my dogs in nature, but also from dreams, experiences I’ve had, and ideas that come from my subconscious. The best ideas come when I’m not looking! Other qualities that each painting shares, is a feeling of isolation or loneliness, I’m not sure how obvious this is, but I see it. What drives me as an artist is the unknown. When I begin a painting, the empty board feels terrifying, creating a feeling of vulnerability within and it will affect my emotions for days until I figure out the direction of my composition, but I love the chaos in this dance. What is the technique and medium you use for 26 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
painting? I love glazing and scumbling which I do after I have applied many layers of paint as a base to create a foundation for the composition. After glazing and scumbling, I apply more paint using tiny sable brushes, leaving the small brush strokes on the surface of the painting to help create an intimate affect. I use oil paints, and the brand that I love is Holbein, a Japanese paint. Do you paint every day? I try, but sometimes life gets in the way. When I’m not painting, there is always a part of my brain that is thinking creatively, like ways to implement new ideas into interesting compositions, or problem solving on a painting in progress. What is the painting Things We Don’t Say about? See this art work and others mentioned in this interview but not shown on here website: www.cheche-art.com I couldn’t help but let my imagine wander and conjure up my own “living thing” lurking in the
shadows. “Things We Don’t Say” is one of my favorite paintings! I love painting interiors that have a message within. This painting is about relationships and the space between words and thoughts that are not realized, causing a great deal of misunderstandings in relationships. “What We Found In Wonderland” is one of my favorite paintings! Can you tell us about it? I love this one too, thank you! I thought it would be fun to do a circus themed painting with all women, engaged in various activities. This painting came about when I was at my home in the White Mountains. It is primarily surrounded by forest and I thought I’d create a landscape that feels like an isolated forest with an all-female circus underway. Elizabeth, please tell us a little about your background? I studied interior design and art history in college but I always wanted to be a painter. I chose not to study painting though, because I didn’t want any
What we Found In Wonderland Elizabeth Cheche
outside influence to affect my style, so I taught myself to paint at the age of sixteen. My parents were intellectuals, and they were very liberal in their belief systems, which allowed me to live a life without the thought of limitations. I am grateful for this!
was younger, I had a variety of side jobs including; illustrator, waitress, and I even owned an art gallery for a number of years. Each job was a wonderful experience!
Tell us about where you live your life now. Who might be your best friend? We have two homes, both in Arizona, one in the White Mountains and one in Rio Verde. We are surrounded by nature and wildlife at each, both supplying us with beauty and inspiration that nurtures our creativity. My boyfriend is a nature photographerand my best friend.
You must have had a mentor in your life to help boost your appreciation for art, who might this be? My father was an avid art collector, so I grew up surrounded by beautiful paintings. I remember being very young and just staring at them, internalizing the beauty and trying to figure out how the artists did what they did. I think looking at my dad’s collection, all those years, sealed my fate to be a painter!
Tell us what other talents you possess? I love interior design, and also health and fitness, though I’m not sure that the later falls into a talent category, but it’s a huge part of my life. Art making can be quiet an investment! Do you have side jobs? I do not have a side job now, thankfully! When I
Do you follow other artists living or passed? Who and why? Yes, I have a few that inspire me. They include the female surrealists from the 1940’s: Leonora Carrington, Leonor Fini and Dorthea Tanning, but also the surrealist painter Philip Curtis. I have always been drawn to surrealism. There is magic in it!
I think you probably enjoy going to your own art openings. Who doesn’t? What’s that like for you? I enjoy my art openings. They give me a nice perspective on how people view my work. I had a funny experience once, not long ago, when one of my collectors was looking at a painting on the wall and commented that he really liked it. I asked him if he noticed that the woman in the painting didn’t have arms (she was part of my Miss America series), he was surprised that he didn’t notice this, and it made me wonder what people actually see when they look at art. What have you observed around you that has had a direct effect on your thinking about life? Two things have influenced my life directly, one of them was growing up in the sixties when people had larger families and women tended to stay home to take care of them. I remember feeling early on that this would not be the life I wanted, especially having children. The other experience Continued on next page... THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 27
Elizabeth Cheche
that taught me well, was having had a series of jobs where I had a boss. I inherently knew that I wanted to work for myself and being a painter fit that goal nicely. As far as worldly events go for us at the moment, with Corona virus, how do you imagine the outcome will be down the line for you and other artists? Yes, this situation is a sad state of affairs for many, but strangely, my life hasn’t changed at all. I think most painters find that self-isolation is necessary to do great work. It is for me, anyway. Creative people seem to weather storms well. I think it’s always been that way, historically speaking. The realism of your work shows skill, Elizabeth. Rendering with oil is like a gift. I was wondering, have you worked much in other mediums, such as pastel, or watercolor? Have you spent time pencil rendering? Yes, it is a gift, and one of the hardest mediums to master, which is why I love it so much! I worked in pencil, as a child, and I remember really enjoying it. I tried drawing everything imaginable, and then I discovered Prisma colored pencils. They were challenging, but fun. I longed to work in 28 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
Santo Sacrificio
color, so I started teaching myself to paint in oil when I was 16 and it’s been my favorite medium since. What part of making art is still challenging for you? In what ways? What is involved in this challenge to achieve satisfying results? My work is constantly evolving, which is my driving force. When things get too easy, I know it’s time to change directions. As an example, early on I didn’t paint nature into my figurative work because I had no idea how to implement that. Now I love creating lush landscapes within my compositions, but not realistic ones, that was never my goal and like my figurative work my desire is a stylized version of reality. What do you enjoy doing when you are not in your studio painting? I love health and fitness, it’s a huge part of my life. I also love reading and learning about everything. I power through two books a week. I love spending time with my boyfriend and like me, he is a creative person. We share ideas with one another along four dogs who are the keeper of our hearts. We love spending time with them, walking through the wilderness preserves near our homes.
Can you read faces? Do you get vibes whether they should be around you or not? We as artists are so intuitive. Absolutely! I get a feeling in my gut from an energy the other person is creating. I can even feel it on social media when someone wants to be my friend. Thankfully, most people I meet give me a positive feeling. How do you see yourself as you get older and being female? Have you any paintings that illustrate this subject? I like getting older, and I value all of the experiences that I’ve had along the way. The lessons learned have made me who I am. What I don’t like about getting older, is the feeling that time is moving exponentially. I want to hang on to every moment. One of the paintings that I’m working on now is called “Like So Much Lost Time”, and like all my paintings, it’s a self-portrait filled with mystery and beauty, but also sadness. Hence the title, “Like So Much Lost Time”. I can’t give the imagery of the painting away yet, it’s a secret, yet to unfold. If you were given a show at the Louvre, which five paintings would you choose to show and
Elizabeth Cheche The Memory of Trees
why? Who would be the curator? I would choose these five, because they are some of my favorites. “What We Saw When No One Was Looking”,”The Memory of Trees”, “Keeper Of My Heart”, “What We Found In Wonderland” and “Santo Sacrificio”. I would have Sharon Fannin curate my show. She is an interior designer who has collected twenty-three of my paintings over the last two decades and is obviously passionate about my work. Have you travelled much? I’ve been lucky to have traveled to places in Europe, and South and Latin America. The places that inspired me the most were the ones filled with nature and beautiful landscapes, places that I could hike and explore, like Saba or Costa Rica.
If you were to have to jump out of a plane, who would you take with you, and where would you want to safely land? What would you have to have at your landing point? Oh, that’s easy! My dog Chewy. She is the ruler of my world! We would land in a lush meadow, near a stream, surrounded by beauty and wildlife. I would need to have my art supplies and lots of books to read, as provisions, and maybe my Vitamix Blender, too.
them, and each one can take many months to complete. I try to stay extremely fit and healthy, as part of my goal to live a long and meaningful life, and to accomplish as many paintings as I can. As far as attaining goals, I’ve been fortunate to make a good living painting, but my true goal is to have fun doing so! Thank you, Elizabeth
You give the world such beautiful art. I hope this will continue for a life-time. What do you wish for in your life time to happen for you? What are you driven to work towards attaining? Thank you for the wonderful compliment!!! I would love to live a few lifetimes, literally! I have so many paintings in the drawing stage, files of
www.cheche-art.com
THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 29
ASHLEY YANG-THOMPSON MISS EXPANDING UNIVERSE Interview by Geoffrey Young
Geoffrey Young: Before moving to Great Barrington what kinds of work kept you alive while you were doing your art in Manhattan? Ashley Yang Thompson: Before I moved to GB, I was a resident at Flux Factory in Long Island City, Queens. As part of my residency, I had access to a warehouse filled with old SNL props, art books, decorations, paper, et cetera. It was like Christmas all the time. I'd take the best looking books and haul them to Strand and rare book stores, where I'd sell them. Other than that I was lucky to sell nearly every single oil painting I made while living in NYC. I also got paid to handwrite letters for a matchmaking service for single Jews. I have gorgeous cursive. The first work I saw by you was the performance you did at my gallery in 2018. You’d memorized some poems, and, sporting a wig with green pulsing battery-generated lights, you delivered the poems while moving, bending, spinning, stretching, so that we were as aware of your body in space as we were of the content of the poems. And the content of the poems was sexually candid, if not transgressive. Is performance central to your art, still? I grew up in a theater school in San Francisco that my step-father taught at. It was considered acceptable behavior to break out into song in the middle 30 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
Photographs courtesy of Ashley Yang-Thompson
of a math test. I regularly cartwheeled out of classrooms. When I was twelve I played the main nun in Guys and Dolls. Performing is as much a part of me as my nails or ear wax. I do a bit of performance art, and it’s an intense experience for me. I’m usually terrified, and art has always been a vehicle for me to overcome my fears. Because I’ll do anything the art demands; I’m committed. Even if it’s publicly humiliating. Especially if it’s publicly humiliating. The embarrassment is informative. It’s a thread I am compelled to follow. There’s often nudity and urine and transgressive elements because I want to investigate why that is transgressive. Why can men casually stroll shirtless in the summer, while a woman might be arrested for doing the same thing, or at least cause a big scene? Why is my body so loaded? And what are the beliefs I’ve unknowingly latched onto that cripple me? And so I use art to confront that status quo and uproot business as usual, and it’s very awkward. The kind of permission that artists give themselves, to look into dark corners, or under the bed, for unprocessed memories, or unexplored assumptions, is not given to everyone. Most artists remain content to stay within tried and true conventions. One beacon for me has been something Carroll Dunham said: “I just paint
what I want to look at.” Easy to say, but harder to do? I love that! I’ll add it to my long list of pithy words to live by. Toni Morrison said something similar: “If there’s a book you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” Otherwise the same stories will be told over and over again, otherwise I’ll keep trying to fit my extrawide, size 8 ½ feet into Cinderella’s impossibly nymph-like glass slipper by cutting off my own toes. I make Worm House because I want to see pro-acne, pro-wrinkles, pro-ugly, pro-excess body hair, pro-egregious human error advertisements. I want to love all the sloppy parts of myself, and of others as well -- by giving yourself permission, you give others permission. I am so much more curious about the evil stepsisters than Cinderella -this idea that you have to maim yourself and swallow the pain in order to be accepted. The idea that there is only one ideal woman, and that you have to destroy others and destroy yourself in the process of becoming someone you’re not. What also comes to mind is the title of Bruce Nauman’s neon spiral wall sign: The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths. That’s pretty ambitious, but as the poet Dean Young said, “The error is not to fall, but to fall from an ungreat height.” Anyways, I’m not trying to save the world, but I’ve got to save myself. I’m severely
Worm House #35 magazine cover published by Ashely Yang-Thompson
emotionally constipated. If I don’t find a way to bring those dark parts of me to the surface, something very nasty will happen to my soul. Art is what happens when I perform a positive exorcism on myself. Not long ago you began producing WORM HOUSE, a weekly “magazine” with but four pages of writing, artwork, and graphic mayhem per issue. Looking back at previous weeks, it begins to read like an up to the minute diary of a pissed off satirist. No subject, no theme is safe from your “attack.” You load the pages with obnoxious bons mots, hilarious confessions of an emotionally self-chastising artist, and advice for your readers about whom you assume they share the same frustrations, obsessions & compulsions as “the writer” does. Peeling the emotional onion, down to the tears in both eyes, seems to be your default place to go. I can imagine the exhilaration and anxiety these issues cause. Can you keep up this torrid weekly pace and not crack up? That’s just who I am, psychic warts and all. Sometimes I generate work specifically for Worm House, but more often than not, it’s my unedited notes on life. I’m an intense, anxious, strange, loving, brutal, absurd, creature, but I’m convinced that I’m not alone in this. Emerson said, “to believe
your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, -- that is genius.” That resonates with me. Although Worm House goes to dark places, I find extraordinary lightness while working on it. For some reason, I find the worst parts of me and others to be funny. And I like to laugh. I am usually laughing as I write and draw. If there is no joy in the process then it's a sign I need to stop and consider taking another approach. I try to take the work seriously without becoming serious. It’s the weekly homework assignment I give to myself. As long as I’m learning, whatever I do is ok, no big deal. Humor, of a happily twisted kind, saves the day. We readers turn the page, waiting for the next surprise, and are met with quarantine poems, or yellow lined paper filled with drawn faces and thought balloons, body-obsessed acknowledgments of off-color activities: and now the VIRUS as an unexpected reality that you begin to use for the opportunity it provides to face a new demon. Winging it, when uncertainty is the rule. How has the pandemic affected your daily life? Do you find yourself drawing upon things you learned in school, mentors you might have had, in negotiating the new abnormal? Silver linings: I can see my therapist twice a week
because she has more time. I’m taking free virtual creative writing workshops every day through the New York Writers Coalition, which my dear friend (and OG Worm House subscriber) Aaron Zimmerman founded. Colleges and universities are making their classes available to the public for free, and I am virtually auditing a kick-ass class on Contemporary Art. I love homework. I love an excuse to stay up late reading a textbook. I love how excited students are. I’m a life-long student. I love talking about art and ideas and philosophizing about the approximately infinite universe. The whole world is on pause. I used to need acid to trip, but this is about as surreal as it gets (knock on wood) -- a reality TV president, the ratio of online to offline lives, a pandemic, quarantine - has mother nature grounded all of humanity? Maybe we’ve all lost our marbles. And through it all we consort with our built-in navigators (Plato’s daimon, Lorca’s duende), who remind us that art is necessary to redeem if not explain the unraveling, that the humor, critique, self-loathing and self-love can be instruments of understanding and regeneration. All the voices echoing in our heads: and yet, not cacophony. You seem to channel (explore, exploit, gobble up) each passing fancy for what it Continued on next page... THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 31
Art work for Worm House magazine VIII by Ashley Yang-Thompson
can reveal. Is it fair to ask if there is a single troubling event in your past that you can only face via the sublimation of art or writing? I am more concerned with troubling patterns than any single troubling event. I don’t want to walk into the same trough over and over again if I can help it. I am not sure if art redeems anything, although I remember as a child plotting my memoir and filtering events through the lens of a story to make my experiences more palatable. Story-telling is a dangerous business. The story “I am a victim” or “bad things happened to me” is as easy and ubiquitous as a bag of potato chips. A story may seem harmless, but too much of the wrong kind of story can have a devastating impact on the collective psyche. Muriel Rukeyser said “the universe is made of stories, not atoms.” I’m a big fan of Kenzaburo Oe’s book “Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness.” Nobody is innocent, not even the children. Everybody is a victim. Or nobody is a victim. There are so many layers of oppression and selfimplication. Oe really turned my perspective inside out, outside in. And the title alone is a poem. Have you met with any censorship in your work? Whether in the showing of it, or in the effort to make it public? I’ve heard of print shops who refuse to print certain images deemed “offensive.” . I have been censored many, many times, beginning 32 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
with my mother, who is highly disturbed by the self-referential nature of my work (not that I blame her). In high school, the Head of School and Academic Dean censored my commencement speech and asked me to rewrite the best parts of it two days before the graduation ceremony, saying that it was “inappropriate for the grandparents in the audience.” I think that’s ageist. The wackiest, most open-minded, ready-to-laugh folks I know are septuagenarians. Anyhow, I gave them their speech and memorized mine and it was a big hit. (A few years later, that same Head of School was on the cover of the NYtimes for being found in a hotel room with a young woman and massive quantities of hard drugs. Life is weird.). I made my professors nervous in college, they never knew what might happen. Here in Great Barrington, Worm House arrived with a rocky start -- I used to put out the zine on bulletin boards around town, and after issue 6, which featured critical intel that Jane Fonda had “sucked her last dick” (true story!) and an advertisement for urine tea, the police did some light detective work and found my muse/assistant/chauffeur: Uncle Fingers (they recognized him from my drawings) and threatened him with a 5 year prison sentence! They put him in the back of the cop car and made him reveal my address, whereupon they interrupted my serene, healthmound lunch to warn me that the bulletin boards are private property and informed me that I “can’t
talk about urine and blowjobs.” They claimed I was distributing obscene content. In preface to his poem “The Concubine,” Evgeny Baratynsky said: “Accusing an erotic poet of depravity is as unfair as accusing a tragic poet of cruelty.” But I didn’t quote Baratynsky to the police officer. Instead, Worm House went underground, because that’s where worms belong. I used to print Worm House at Staples, but I ran into trouble with them at Issue 10, which featured a painting of my best friend’s vagina. I tried to explain to them that I was doing portraits of my friends’ genitals, the way trees communicate from their sexual organs, but they refused to print a gorgeously rendered vagina because Staples is a “family friendly” business. Obviously, every family emerged from a vagina. But it ended up being a blessing in disguise because I found Kwik Print -- they’ve never batted an eye at my art! -and I’ve been printing with them ever since. God bless Kwik Print. In the absence of an art scene—galleries as locked down now as other businesses—are you concerned to earn a buck selling work out of your studio? Do you see the punishing irony of being “Miss Expanding Universe” (your self-selected nom de plume) in a world fast shrinking, self-isolated, opportunities contracting to the size of a belly button? And how did Miss Ex-
Ashley and Uncle Fingers Photograph courtesy of Ashley Yang-Thompson
panding come to you? I just wrote a poem about what’s inside of my belly button (Quarantine Poem No. 19). Anyhow, the world is only shrinking from an anthropocene perspective; the rest of the planet is thriving while we shelter in place. Personally, I’m feeling more connected to humanity than ever. This virus is evidence that we are all literally connected. The fact that the life of an ordinary individual across the globe that I’ve never met can ripple into the small town of Great Barrington, MA is astounding. Luckily, germs are not the only things to spread like wildfire (or wildflowers) and change our lives. Every decision matters. By making a drawing or writing a poem or highlighting a passage of a much-beloved book, you are altering the world. When Trump was elected I began taking my work outside of the gallery, under an alias. I was painting all over my clothes, distributing fliers, pamphlets, and doing a lot of street art. They were poetic calls to action. I rapidly disseminated hundreds of love letters. I invited shopkeepers in the neighborhood to take naps in my exhibition (with an optional erotic poetry reading). Simultaneously, I was selling my paintings through a Chinese Art and Design company that changed my name from Ashley Thompson to Ashley Yang-Thompson, because it would make my work easier to sell to Chinese clients. As a mixed race person, I’ve felt the
need to prove my Americanness to Caucasians or prove my Chineseness to Chinese my whole life. I just got sick of that narrative, so I decided to name myself and forge ahead with a new kind of identity, one based on how I see myself, rather than my feeble attempts to fit myself into a container. I was living in Queens and I had a community membership to the Noguchi Museum, which is one of the rare museums in NYC that doesn’t feel like a zoo. I’d walk there every day, since the membership included free coffee, and I devoured every book in the gift shop in the process. When I read about a sculpture that Noguchi made for Gandhi’s god-daughter, whom he fell in love with, called Miss Expanding Universe, I instantly recognized that as my rightful name. It was destiny calling. As a side note, Isamu Noguchi is half-Japanese, and his fraught attempts to claim his Japaneseness resonated with me. At one point, he self-interned at a Japanese internment camp. He was trying to be helpful by bringing art into a desolate space, but he only realized how much of a gap there was between him and the other Japanese interned there. He had to face the fact that he was far more educated and privileged, and that a shared heritage doesn’t guarantee belonging. Only the Japanese wives swooning over his good looks didn’t resent his presence. Artists are like gods in the heaven of their stu-
dios. They get to present themselves a problem, then they must solve it (in whatever medium they find necessary). Autonomy is a privilege. Yes, it might be thought to be a curse if the problems raised can’t be solved, but who knows? If you had a wand, were a magus with extra powers (and you are!), is there anything you’d like to do right now to alter the course of global drift---be it the pandemic, the warming, or the inequitable distribution of goods? And is there a danger in confusing aesthetic solutions with political ones? Gosh, I don’t think I’m smart enough to answer this question. My wand must be my pen and my power is to make myself laugh. I find it fascinating that just about the most noble thing anyone can do right now is simply to stay at home. It reminds me of Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s Bed-in for Peace. Can making someone laugh be a radical form of protest? Humor, rarer than discourse, almost always has its targets, whether it’s vanity, or human foible. In any case, as we roll with the punches, it’s a tonic to see you pushing back against conventional thinking, making use of less palatable subjects (acne, bad sex, incontinence, weight) as a way of releasing the id in all its unpredictable forms. There’s funny funny, and funny obnoxContinued on next page... THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 33
Ashley’s studio wall of thought-provoking art and text Photograph courtesy of Ashley Yang-Thompson
ious, and both are necessary at getting under the skin. And as a way of reaching your readers who are nothing if not draped in skin. You seem to like Great Barrington, as I feel the town has taken to you. Does it feel like home yet, even with the Triplex closed and the citizenry wearing masks? I am obsessed with the movie Groundhog Day. I’ve seen it at least a dozen times. I was stranded in Great Barrington during a blizzard, just like how Bill Murray’s character was stranded in Punxsutawney. At the time, I was a nomad straight out of On the Road, hopping from artist residency to artist residency, and living out of my backpack. I was hitching a ride from Vermont Studio Center to The Wassaic Project, and cars were starting to veer off the road in the heavy snowfall. The sculptress I was hitching a ride from knew someone who lived in a community house in Great Barrington. We had no option but to stay there overnight. Suddenly, I found myself in a victorian mansion, sleeping on a golden velvet couch, surrounded by red velvet wallpaper, with the dim romantic lighting of a pellet stove and a chandelier, and the most generous, trusting, healthy, creative group of young people 34 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
I’d ever met. And the rent was impossibly low. I was smitten. I felt like I was in a fairy tale. All the artists I knew prior to then communed over drugs, drinking, and the promise of sex. I was trying to change, trying to be healthier and saner and develop some kind of sustainable lifestyle. The constant drama of my New York City life gave me some fantastic war stories but depleted me by the time I was 23. (Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I communed with others over the drugs, drinking, and the promise of sex. I had to transform, and as part of that process, my relationships transformed.) Back to Groundhog Day. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d end up in a small town in Massachusetts. For the most part, I see the same people every day. And I go to the same places every day. A place like Great Barrington used to be my idea of Hell. Now it’s my idea of redemption. Everyday is an opportunity to live the same day, but better. To practice getting better at practicing. The more activated I am, the more I’m paying attention -- and there’s always so much going on when you’re paying attention -- the better my day is.
I’ve met the most remarkable people here. My “Uncle Fingers,” who has four pugs and two cats, has read all of In Search of Lost Time but cannot tie his own shoes, and writes the most heartbreaking poetry from the confines of his mother’s basement, Michelle, Morgan, you, Sharon, Nana Fran and her mystic outsider art garden, Connie, Guzman, the list goes on… Groundhog Day is the most philosophical movie of all time. Bill Murray kills himself hundreds of times in the process of transforming himself into a Real Human Being. I, too, have destroyed myself over and over and over again. That is what it means to be an addict. Louis Bourgeois stitched the following words into a handkerchief: I’ve been to hell and back again. And let me tell you, it was wonderful. Early on in my career, I sold my soul. Now I am devoted to spending the rest of my life redeeming it. Doing the work is my only option, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
missexpandinguniverse.com
Julia Grey, Find My Heart, B&W archival pigment print, 2020.12"x18"
Coming soon www.xgender.net Julia Grey
Gotta Minute? Great! Because every Monday I introduce you to one of New Brunswick Canada’s finest artists! Just mosey on over to Instagram or Facebook and check us out! Remember, if you like what you hear and see, leave a comment and share the post! Or, visit my YouTube page to easily find past episodes! —Thanks, Jennifer
https://www.instagram.com/jenniferpazienza/ https://www.facebook.com/jenniferpazienzaartstudio/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiqXBQdVAQ0 www.jenniferpazienza.com
THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 35
PELICAN SQUALL, 24 X 30”
PENGUINS PHOTOGRAPH 11X17”
CLAUDIA D'ALESSANDRO The natural world offers a not-so-distant mirror of our experiences reflected in sky, water and earth. Great drama, intricate patterns, hidden faces, abstract shapes and a spectrum of colors abound in shifting light. But sometimes, they last only for an instant.” I strive to artfully capture such quixotic moments and transform them into paper, canvas and metal prints that can ornament and inspire our living spaces. It is one of my life's joyful pleasures to share these images with others.” Claudia believes that the beauty of nature provides a powerful ally, defense and inspiration against the dismay and worry of the human condition. She shares her life with her beloved David, and divides her time between Berkshire County, MA and St. Johns County, FLA. Prints on canvas, photo stock, aluminum and glass are available in a variety of sizes. Claudia d'Alessandro – 413-717-1534, cdalessandro26@gmail.com, https://www.dalessandrophotography.com.
36 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
INTERCONNECTED 2020 9 X 12” OIL AND WAX MEDIUM ON WOOD PANEL
RED LILY PHOTOGRAPH 11 X 17”
LARRY FRANKEL HOW BAD IS CLIMATE CHANGE NOW? IS WHAT I DO IMPORTANT? The growing issue of Global Warming became the inspiration and impetus to create these new images. My imagination transformed Flora and Fauna into a future representation of a newly created landscape. My newly created world consists of constructed photos using combinations of various imagery I have taken and have in my inventory. Shifted colors become my new reality in which to view our environment. Larryfrankel photography.com / Larryfrankel@me.com / Cell 914-419-8002
“SHORING THE COAST” 2020 8”X8” OIL AND WAX MEDIUM ON WOOD PANEL
GHETTA HIRSCH The pandemic is expanding all over the world and my paintings cannot focus solely on the Berkshires. Somehow as in the other paintings exhibited in this June magazine, I seem to be up on a plane looking at the disaster down below. “Pontoosuc Lake” seen in my ad insert is the view of Pontoosuc Lake in Pittsfield viewed from above. It is called “Vol d’Oiseau” which means “Bird’s Eye View” from the French. Then I started seeing the earth and oceans in my artist mind. “Interconnected” hints to the unavoidable spread of this virus when we believe we are protected by the separate landforms and our physical distancing. “Shoring the Coast” was painted after “Interconnected and it is a symbolic coastal barrier trying to push the viral enemy. Alas! We are not done with this pandemic yet and I have a hard time painting our beautiful Berkshires these days. It is frustrating to be in quarantine for so long but wish safety to all. Three Stones Gallery in Concord is still representing me, but all views are on a virtual tour just like some of our work that should be at The Artful Mind Gallery. I have upgraded my website to show you more samples of my work and invite you to visit. You can also view the pages of this magazine and Instagram @ghettahirschpaintings. We need Art to survive! Ghetta Hirsch - ghettahirsch.squarespace.com
SHARON GUY PARADISE
SHARON GUY CONNECTING WITH NATURE My purpose as an artist is to connect with the healing power of the natural world and to encourage others to do the same. Nature is alive and infused with spirit. I constantly seek to reconnect with this spirit of nature through creating art. While I quietly observe and study land, water, and skies, the ordinary world around me is transformed by light and shadow into the sublime. I enjoy painting the dramatic seascapes and clouds of the Gulf Coast and New England scenes. My work is in private collections in the United States and Canada. Sharon Guy - sharonguyart@gmail.com , 941-321-1218, http://www.sharonguyart.com
ONE WAY TRIP TO FISHKILL
JOHN HOUSEMAN Welcome to my art show! The paintings are done in gouache, an opaque watercolor, on illustration board. I draw them directly onto the board, with much erasing and reconfiguring. When it's done, I fill in the lines with paint. I don't begin with a clear vision, making it up as I go along. Please visit my website where you will find many more surreal images along with portraits of people, portraits of snazzy automobiles, mandalas, architectural works, pen and ink drawings, editorial illustrations, and photos. I have yet to discover an artist whose work resembles my surreal paintings. Thank you so much for looking. John Houseman - john-houseman.artistwebsites.com.
SORELLA 1, OIL ON CANVAS, 54 X 54”
JENNIFER PAZIENZA Jennifer Pazienza, born into an Italian American New Jersey family, has spent a lifetime making art. Beginning with her mother’s kitchen and backyard garden. Jennifer is currently working on a new series of paintings, Embracing the Square: Love Poems from the Ridge that continues her Keswick Ridge painting narrative and will be curated by Paul Edouard Bourque opening June 2021 in Moncton’s Capitol Theatre Art Gallery. She has an extensive exhibition record. Her work is held in significant Public, Private and Corporate Collections in Canada, the United States, Britain and Italy. A Jersey girl from an Italian-American family, Jennifer has painted, for nearly 30 years, from her beloved Keswick Ridge, New Brunswick in Atlantic Canada where she lives with husband Gerry Clarke and their dog Mela. Jennifer Pazienza - www.jenniferpazienza.com, @jenniferpazienza
THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 37
CAROLYN NEWBERGER ART FROM IN & OUT OF THE FOREST Interview by Harryet Candee
If I may refer to your recent writing, Illuminating the Hidden Forest, ch. 42, we can see so much in the simple changing of the earth from winter to spring. (Softly into the Night, charcoal and collage, vs. “spring” photo) It is also an analogy you have brought to our attention of what exactly is going on our planet, so I have to ask you to please explain this theory that you have brought enlightenment to my artful mind. Carolyn Newberger: Liminal state refers to a place in between one social order and another. In anthropology, it is used to refer to the temporal space between rituals, with one ritual ending a season or a time of life and a subsequent ritual marking the beginning of the next. We are in such a time. Our quarantine marks the liminal space between the world as we knew it and the world as it will be. We don’t know what that world will look like, but 38 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
Photographs courtesy of the Artist
we know that it will not be the same. So this is a time of uncertainty, fear, and for many, a rethinking of what has been taken for granted and what is important. Changings of seasons can be liminal, as winter turns uncertainly into Spring, or late adolescence as children turn into adults, or pandemics, as our worlds change irrevocably into a new kind of order. My collage, Softly into the Night, captures a liminal moment, as the central figure, wrapped and floating through space, is between one state and another, perhaps between life and death. How and where and in what ways has your latest artistic voice been most clearly heard? I have found a new artistic voice in discovering and immersing myself in the forest. I am fortunate to live in a home surrounded by nature. With the
help of my little dog, rescued two years ago, whose every sense comes alive in the woods, I am acutely alive there, too. The forest stimulates my eyes to see, and my voice to write. Over the past two years I paint in the forest and pen essays describing what I am discovering. Many of these have been published in The Berkshire Edge, a publication of news, arts and ideas in the Berkshires. “I go where my soul takes me”, is a statement describing the many ways you live your life. Can you elaborate on a few examples of this nature of being for us? It’s very simple. If something excites me, I will pursue it through research, explore my thoughts through writing, or capture my impressions visually. Artistically, this can take many forms, such as the exploration of the human body in life
Trillium pushing from the ground Photo: Carolyn Newberger
Softly Into The Night, Carolyn Newberger, mixed media 30 x 42�
In The Grotto, Carolyn Newberger Watercolor, 9-6-2018
drawing, writing about and illustrating music and dance performances, searching for mushrooms in the forest, or playing with the possibilities of turning old work into new with the additions and manipulations of collage. Over the past year, you have been collaborating with artist Philip Gerstein, a notably good Bostonian abstract painter, and you, a mixed media realist. Together contributing reflections and contemplations on nature through realism and abstraction in an art exhibit at Galatea Fine Art in Boston. What have been some of the goals and challenges for both of you as a duo? And, what have you been learning from this joint relationship? Most artists work as singular entities, so this is groundbreaking and worth understanding.
Philip is indeed, a wonderful painter. He uses color, form and texture to create vibrant abstract images that speak to me, and in which I often see nature embedded within. We are both members of Galatea Fine Arts, a Boston gallery, and when we discovered that our solo shows would occur simultaneously in adjacent gallery spaces, we felt that showing our work in pairs would create a kind of artistic conversation about art and nature across what have been seen as boundaries between realism and abstraction. His abstract canvasses evoke nature. My plein air forest paintings seek form, color and texture in nature. Underlying both our work is our mutual search for the pulse of life emerging through the layers of paint.
Bursting leaves on the doomed branch photo: Carolyn Newberger
Over the course of the past six months, life has changed as we know it. Has it launched a surge of creativity for you? Emotionally, and practically, you must be naturally grounded in order to allow positive energy take you through each day. I also wonder, does your living space, so beautiful, or your private family life have anything to do with it? Life has certainly changed. Confined to home and walks in the forest, my observations have become more focused. Continued on the next page... THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 39
Philip Gerstein After the Humans, 2016
Carolyn Newberger and Philip Gerstein collaboration on Nature and Abstraction. They have approached nature across the line that often times divides abstraction from realism. Carolyn records hidden treasures she finds en plein air. In a studio, Philip creates abstract forms, rich texture and emotive color that find their echo in nature Carolyn Newberger: Trees In The Winter, 11 x 9” pastel/toned paper, 2020
Carolyn Newberger, Purple Tooth Rosettes, 6 x 8” watercolor and pastel, 2018
I notice things that I didn’t notice before. Small things. I feel the weight of the passage of time, as the activities of the outside world are reduced or eliminated. I describe these changes in recent essays in the Berkshire Edge. I now have several ideas in my mind for new work that is conceptual, expressing an emotional experience in the world of pandemic and change, using collage and mixed media to communicate these layered ideas. With your background in education and psychology, can you give us your thoughts on best ways for us to stay healthy and motivated? Well, I can’t predict the summer weather, but cooking healthy and delicious food and walking in the woods have been important to our sense of wellbeing. Motivation can’t be forced. Sometimes it’s ok to take it easy and not feel as though we need always to produce. Read a good book. Listen to good music. These are balm for the soul and stimulus for the mind. Reaching out to friends and family can be a bright side in this dark time. In my 40 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
opinion, we should pay attention to what feels right for us, and not be critical of ourselves if we don’t produce as much right now. Is what you create 100% for you, or what is created for your potential viewers? We create differently I think for just ourselves. When we have an audience we sometimes gear it towards being a certain way so that it is liked, or bought, or what we think would be acceptable. That is one of the artist arguments we have within ourselves with artmaking. When I write, I aim for simplicity and clarity, so being understandable to the reader is very much on my mind. This is also true if I have an idea that I want to communicate visually. But mostly I am inner driven. Both writing and images emerge in the process of their creation. I learn what I am thinking as I write, and I learn what I am seeing as I paint. “Without a continuous thirst for art education,
Philip Gerstein, God Shall Wipe All Tears, 2018
our art can go stale or disconnected from the soul”. How would you react to this thought? Teachers, classes and colleagues are central to my development as an artist, and I am grateful to them all. This February I attended a four-day workshop with watercolor artist Stephen Quiller, and was energized with new ideas and techniques. But there are many ways to keep vital and connected as artists that have to do with engagement in general, whether in quiet ways, like poet Emily Dickenson, or in engagement with others. Carolyn, you are a visual artist, musician, and writer. How do you find yourself juggling these venues, and how would they overlap? The overlap between art and writing is natural, because I draw at music and dance performances and use the drawings in reviews that I write, often with my husband, Eli. Similarly, the forest inspires both the images and ideas that appear in “Illuminating the Hidden Forest” in The Berkshire Edge. Music is on a somewhat different tangent. I am
Carolyn Newberger, A Pond in Springtime, watercolor. From Illuminating the Hidden Forest, Chapter 41: Filled by time and grace, April, 2020, Berkshire Edge
a classically trained flutist and play jazz washboard with my husband Eli’s band, “Eli and the Hot Six.” I adore jazz and studied jazz tap for many years before I injured my knee. Being a musician definitely influences how I respond to and write about music and dance. I don’t worry too much about juggling. When I have a show or a concert, I’m all in with focusing on that. If that means putting something else on the back burner for a while, that’s ok. Your studies of the forest are enchanting! Do you feel like an explorer when in the woods? How does the tromping and discovering moments with Lily feed your imagination and inspire you? Do you run back to the studio to review your findings like a treasure hunt? I totally feel like an explorer in the woods, and I consider Lily my canine sensory extender. She shows me that there is always something new to notice and get excited about. The forest has become my studio. Weather permitting, almost all my drawings and paintings are en plein air and I rarely make changes in the studio. I also often write many of my essays sitting in the forest. Other times I may need a few days at the computer for ideas to percolate and develop. Do you believe something new will cross your path this summer? Like what can you imagine? I have no idea but I’m open to anything. At the moment, I have been affected both in my art and my writing by the corona virus. Tell us about your life in Boston, please. What bridged the gap between there and the Berkshires for you and Eli? What I miss most about Boston is being close to
And Lily, too!
my family and to my art friends. We have years of growing and maturing together as friends and as artists. We stay in close touch, and one of my friends has a second home here, but I miss our weekly life drawing as a group. I also have a cherished book group and writing club. The gap is bridged somewhat by wonderful new friends here and by regular visits to Boston, which I hope will resume in the not too distant future. You were such a city girl in Boston! Now you are a Berkshire girl. Do you miss Boston life? When I was a little girl, I would dream about someday living in a cabin in the woods. Well, that dream has come true and I feel as though I have come home. Everything is here, from the natural world to a rich cultural life. This is a difficult time for our cultural institutions and our business community. My heart goes out to them, and I hope that we shall be able soon to regain what makes this place so very special. In what ways has your art making changed since living in the Berkshires? Have you fo-
cused on new techniques? What have you happily left in Boston that no longer works for you in terms of artmaking here? What has strengthened your art now that you brought from Boston? The Berkshires brought me the forest. Drawing and painting in the forest is challenging. I’ve adapted to an art kit that can fit in a fanny pack. That means that I have to work in a smaller format with limited supplies. Rather than constraining me, I find that it liberates me. I observe more closely, I make more out of less, and am more fully immersed in what I am painting. The drawings that I create during performances are challenging in a different way. There, I have to work fast, especially with dance, which is in constant motion. There I have to convey movement, emotion and the spirit of the performance. What I brought from Boston is a solid foundation. I had great teachers, years of figure drawing, classes in classical oil painting, watercolor technique, drawing and anatomy for artists. I can’t stress too much the importance of hard work and practice, practice, practice. •Tapping into the collectors of your art work, what can you tell them about your work as of today that you think they might like to know? •Actually, as many of them follow my work, I think they know that there will be surprises around the corner. What makes art so exciting is the possibility of play and of new discoveries and challenges. So stay tuned! Thank you, Carolyn!
www.carolynnewberger.com THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 41
UPCYCLED + SUSTAINABLE Reimagined coffee bean bags from plantations worldwide. Handmade in the Berkshires.
www.lilaandkane.com
42 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
CARY HILL SCULPTURE PARK
ARTIST JOAN GRISWOLD
BERKSHIRE DIGITAL Since opening in 2005, Berkshire Digital has done fine art printing for artists and photographers. Giclée prints can be made in many different sizes from 5”x7” to 42”x 80” on a variety of archival paper choices. Berkshire Digital was featured in last Summer’s issue of PDN magazine in an article about fine art printing. See the entire article on the BerkshireDigital.com website. In addition to the printing services, Berkshire Digital does accurate photo-reproductions of paintings and illustrations that can be used in books, magazines, brochures, cards and websites. We also offer restoration and repair of damaged or faded photographs. A complete overview of services offered, along with pricing, can be seen on the web at BerkshireDigital.com Another service offered is portraits of artists in their studios, or wherever they would like, for use in magazines, as the author’s picture in a book, websites or cards. See samples of artist portraits on our website. The owner, Fred Collins, has been a commercial and fine art photographer for over 30 years having had studios in Boston and Stamford. He offers over 25 years of experience with Photoshop, enabling retouching, restoration and enhancement to prints and digital files. The studio is located in Mt Washington but drop-off and pick-up is available through Frames On Wheels, 84 Railroad Street in Great Barrington, MA (413) 528-0997 and Gilded Moon Framing, 17 John Street in Millerton, NY (518) 789-3428. Berkshire Digital - 413 644-9663, or go online to www.BerkshireDigital.com
Salem Art Works (SAW), invites the public to visit the Cary Hill Sculpture Park on SAW’s campus in Salem, New York. Featuring sculptural works by world-renowned artists such as Mark Di Suvero, Kelly Cave, Mia Westerlund Roosen and Peter Lundberg, the Cary Hill Sculpture Park is free of charge, self-guided and open every day from dawn until dusk. While SAW’s general programming for the public and artist residencies is on hold, the sculpture park offers a wonderful opportunity to enjoy nature among world-class artwork and bucolic views of Vermont’s Green Mountains and surrounding Washington County, New York. The park features mostly open terrain that can be walked or driven, allowing ease of social distancing, and maintaining health protocols. Like any organization, SAW recommends that all visitors observe the recommended person-toperson distance of at least 6 feet and to wear masks when close to others from different households. In tandem with continued operation of the park, SAW will be offering online programming through the spring and summer via our social media channels. Please Salem Art Works is located just 90 minutes from the Berkshires. About SAW: Salem Art Works is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit art center and sculpture park located in rural Upstate New York. Founded in 2005 by artist Anthony Cafritz, Salem Art Works is dedicated to supporting both emerging and established artists in the creation of new and progressive work, as well as promoting the understanding and appreciation of contemporary art within the region. Salem Art Works – 646-391-6923, b.gleeksman@salemartworks.org;www.salemartworks.org. Follow us on Facebook (Salemartworks) and Instagram (@salemartworks) for more information.
ENJOY THE SUMMER !
EYE OF THE TIGER, 22X30 INCHES, WATERCOLOR
CAROLYN NEWBERGER Carolyn Newberger is an artist, musician and writer who came to art after an academic and clinical career in psychology at Harvard Medical School. A recipient of awards from Watercolor Magazine, the Danforth Museum, the New England Watercolor Society and Cambridge Art Association, she writes and illustrates music and dance reviews in The Berkshire Edge, a publication of news and ideas in Western Massachusetts, often in collaboration with her husband, Eli Newberger. Her most recent project is an illustrated book of essays, “Illuminating the Hidden Forest,” which is being serialized in The Berkshire Edge. www.carolynnewberger.com
• Virtual Gallery • Press Releases • Editorial • Advertising The Artful Mind supports the Arts during trying times and challenges we face with the Corona V. Now more then ever it’s the time to get your art out there in front of appreciative audiences. Find out more! 413. 645. 4114 artfulmind@yahoo.com
THE ARTFUL MIND JUNE 2020 • 43
Jason And his Grandmother CHAPTER 9
We Rob a Warehouse Saturday came and I had to work for Bluto again, we were going to get copper pipe from a warehouse on Broad Street. Bluto said that the owner of the warehouse wanted to replace the old copper pipe with the newer plastic pipe. I was not positive that Bluto was not doing something dishonest but I did not consider it to be my problem. I was just a kid and the helper, what did I know about copper pipe? Nothing. We did not start removing the copper pipe right away. We had to have coffee and donuts first. I told him I didn’t drink coffee, but he said it was a part of my job. He parked the truck behind the building and we sat on the steps of the entry of an old warehouse, directly across from the train station. There was a train engine idling in the distance, and the smell of diesel fumes in the air. The sounds and smells gave me an odd, anxious feeling. I decided to tell Bluto about my problems with Mrs. Hagner, it seemed like a good time. I explained to him how she was going to fail me unless I got at least 90 on both the math and science exams. I said it was because I disrupted her class, but the truth was that I had never disrupted her class at all. “She hates my guts and I don’t know why.” I said. Bluto did not say anything at first. He was so struck by what I said that he just sat there on the stoop looking at me. He even stopped chewing his donut and sat looking at me with his mouth partly open. Wrinkles appeared on his forehead. Then he began one of his lectures, but he did not get very far. All he said was, “It is because you are…” Then there was a long silence and he began again with, “They are always going to…” Then, in confusion or embarrassment he gave his explanation up completely, and instead of any lecture we set to work removing the copper pipe in the basement. Working with him that morning was a very strange experience for me because he obviously had something specific to say about me and my predicament, but whatever it was, there was something about this explanation he was obviously very unwilling to tell me. It had to be some sort of observation that would involve the prospect of hurting my feelings I presumed. There was the likelihood that his explanation would turn out to be some outlandish notion like his idea about the Coca-Cola Company; some convoluted political theory that would present some analysis of the behavior of my teachers and myself. 44 • JUNE 2020 THE ARTFUL MIND
But even so, as useless as his ideas often were, I was intensely curious to find out what it was. I was so curious in fact that I said not a word more about it. Even if Bluto’s ideas about the government, politics and the crimes of the soda companies were just a lot of silly bluster, on the other hand Bluto knew a great deal about the procedure of disconnecting and removing copper pipe in an old building. We had to find the main water pipe and shut it off, and then he had to turn off the various valves that led to different parts of the system. That was insufficient because water seeped through the various valves and there was enough water in the pipes so that the torch would not get the pipes hot enough. He had to unscrew certain openings on valves to drain out more water. He would have me hold the pipes with pliers while he heated the pipe with a torch and when the solder turned from gray to silver I would give it a twist. He did all this complicated and difficult work with great accuracy and concentration, and little by little he improved on my part of the task with little suggestions that would never have occurred to me. I asked him how he knew how to do all these things and if he was a plumber and he said. “My father was a delivery man for parts supply stores and he would always take me with him when he made his rounds. He was never one to go in the front door of a business if he had a delivery to make, but would go by the side door where the work was being done. My father liked to chat with the workmen while they were working, and that was the reason he liked to deliver parts to the workers, and not to some secretary at a desk in a front office.” “Sometimes we would be in transmission repair garage, and he would deliver a box of gears. Then he wanted to have a look at the deconstructed transmission and see how the work was going. In this way I learned how to rebuild a car transmission, just by watching it being done, since I had nothing else to do while I waited. My father was constantly being fired, because he took so long with his deliveries; always stopping to talk with the workman at their various jobs. At that time the economy was booming, and Pop would just get another job. Once it was plumbing supplies, and so I learned how to plumb, then it was roofing supplies, and we would be up on a roof someplace seeing how copper flashing was nailed down.” That was Bluto’s explanation of how he happened to know how to do so many things. I had my doubts however. I watched my mother thread a needle one time, and after than I knew how to thread a needle. I watched a boy in my class playing the violin, and it looked so easy that I tried but it turned out to be much more difficult than it looked. None of that mattered however, the more serious question was this: If Bluto was so smart that he could learn numerous skills by accident, was that any proof that his theories and ideas were correct? If a person is a master of one thing, can one automatically assume some indirect mastery of all things? Is the mastery of an art composed of certain inevitable steps so that the procedure is predetermined? We were in a cavernous old warehouse, down in the cellar. We threw the pipe on the floor and it rang out and echoed in the silence. In the distance we could hear a train pulling out of the station. It
was a strange morning and all the time Bluto was silent and frowning, thinking about something. We left at 11:30 because Bluto wanted to get to the scrap metal yard before it closed at noon. Bluto backed the truck out into the street, turned it around and parked it in front of the warehouse. He opened the door, got out and said, “You drive Albert.” There was no point in warning him that I had no idea about how to drive a truck, and did not know what to do with the clutch of a standard shift. Bluto insisted I drive, but before he had me turn on the engine he gave me some simple instructions. He held up his hands and sort of rubbed them together as an explanation of how a clutch worked saying, “It works like this, my left hand is the flywheel and my right hand is the clutch plate, when you let the clutch out they come together like this and the truck starts to move.” With that he brought his hands slowly together and rubbed them around. I had no idea what it all meant. I pushed the clutch pedal to the floor as I had seen him do a thousand times, and turned the key in the ignition. I pushed down on the gas and let out the clutch, the truck leaped forward about five feet, shut off, and Bluto went flying off the soda box into the back of the truck. “That’s inertia,” I said to him. Bluto had never been on the soda box passenger’s seat before; it was a new experience for him. By the time I had driven six blocks down Broad Street and stopped at two lights I had mastered, to a certain extent, the truck’s clutch. Once the clutch was out all the way and the engine didn’t stall; after I had put the thing up into second and then down into third; at that point I knew in my heart that Jason was right about cars, and I was wrong. There was no arguing with the feeling of the seat pushing against your back as you pressed down on the accelerator. One listened to the steady increasing roar of the engine, but more than those things was the engine, seeming to count up to four over and over again as it idled at a light; the thud, thud, thud, of a happy old oil burning engine, faithful and intelligent as a dog. We drove into the scrap metal yard and parked in front of a huge piece of cement bordered all around with a strip of steel, like a single huge parking space for an eighteen-wheeler. Bluto told me to drive the truck up onto the cement slab, and shut off the engine. After that we went into a huge barn like building with hardly any lights or windows. Off to one side of the entrance was a makeshift office consisting of two walls, a door and a window looking into the interior. The floor of this office, which was probably made of cement, was entirely covered with dirt, and the only place it was almost clean was the path between the desk, the door, and the cash register, swept clean by the foot traffic of the proprietor and his customers. It was in this establishment that we were apparently going to transform our copper pipe into cash, from which I would be paid my five dollars for my mornings work.
—RICHARD BRITELL: FROM THE BLOG NO CURE FOR THE MEDIEVAL MIND
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