Searching for the surreal. Dan Hollings is painting his place in the world
INTERVIEW
The near extinction of the Southern Plains Bison and the decline of the Wild West
ESSAY
Everlasting compatriots: Ben Reader and Emma Rose Kennedy
IN CONVERSATION
Selected poems from ‘Maybe the echoes have changed’ by Jack Watson
POETRY
The Maeckelberghe Archive: as Cornish as the carns and coves
FEATURE
The Cornish arts and culture magazine
Issue 01: Beyond the ring and thimble
£10
Yew! Magazine presents
Beyond the Ring and Thimble issue 01
IN YOUR HANDS NEWLYN ART GALLERY 24 JUL – 16 OCT 2021 International collaborations with people in Cornwall and the UK
Arrangement No. 28 (Rue Chabanais) Benny Nemer with the participation of Bastien Pourtout 2020
OUTSIDE THE ALGORITHM THE EXCHANGE
24 JUL – 09 OCT 2021 Exploring online culture and human connection
newlynartgallery.co.uk Still from The Life Game by Keiken and obso1337 (Detail)
THOMAS SPENCER FINE ART
Paul Anderson Morrow
Sarah Needham
20th Century and Contemporary Artworks
thomasspencerfineart.co.uk
THOMAS SPENCER FINE ART
Mary Fedden
Ben Reader
20th Century and Contemporary Artworks
Instagram: thomasspencerfineart
INTERVIEW | 12
Dan Hollings is painting his place in the world ESSAY | 22
The near extinction of the Southern Plains Bison and the Decline of the Wild West IN CONVERSATION | 36
Everlasting: Ben Reader and Emma Rose Kennedy
46
70
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36
POETRY | 46
Selected poems from ‘Maybe the echoes have changed’ by Jack Watson FEATURE | 58
The Maeckelberghe Archive: as Cornish as the carns and coves SHOW PREVIEWS | 68
Outside the Algorithm and The Best of Both Worlds REVIEWS | 70
End is Nigh, Patio Project, Screening Sculptures, Future Of Nothing and 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship ARTIST PROFILES | 74
Editor and publisher Charlie McQuaid Contributors Adam Cale Charlotte Foreman Niall Flynn Becky Tyrell Emma Rose Kennedy Charlie Mills Michael Eddy Rory Blair
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On the Cover ‘He’s not cornish, he’s a fake welsh’ (self portrait) 138 x 138cm Oil, posca, oil stick on canvas Dan Hollings General Inquiries info@yewmagazine.co.uk Advertising advertising@yewmagazine.co.uk Submissions submissions@yewmagazine.co.uk
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Marianne Trewern, Jesse Pollock, Jane Hayes Greenwood and ones to watch
The opinion expressed by contributors to this publication are not always a reflection of the opinions or the policy of the publishers. Information on services or products contained within editorial sections does not imply recommendation by Yew! Media. No responsibility can be accepted for errors or omissions. No part of this publication can be reproduced in any form without the written authority of Yew! Media Ltd.
A warm welcome to the first ever issue of Yew! Magazine. We were born out of a community of artists, photographers, designers, laborours, fishermen, pharmacists, teachers, cooks, miners, barmen... The Cornish. We endeavour to serve that same community by celebrating Cornish art and culture by creating a platform for up-and-coming talent as well as established names. We begin our journey by going Beyond the Ring and Thimble. In this issue we aim to consider the relationship between the flâneur and the fisherman, the theatre and the mundane, the ring and the thimble. The Ring and Thimble is an inconspicuous but endearing stone monument found near Chywoon Grove, between Newlyn and Paul in West Penwith. It marks the end of town and the beginning of the wild, deep and mysterious Penwith. We aspire to journey beyond the Ring and Thimble, into the unknown - to the place where real life becomes a vessel for daydream and fantasy. Where myth and folklore rise to the surface and shimmer on ordinary waters. Where stones whisper, dance and tease secrets from a forgotten life.
Go Beyond the Ring and Thimble by embarking on a charming chat with the talented Dan Hollings about how he uncovers the magic in the mundane, taking everyday scenes and injecting into them a dose of peculiarity. After, Charlotte Foreman takes us on a marvellous journey through the ‘The Big Empty’ in Texas. Expect to move towards oblivion and understand the Southern Plains Bison as well as the irreversible decline of the Wild West. From the Wild West of Texas to the Wild West of Penwith, meander through the magnificent minds of Ben Reader and Emma Rose Kennedy as we listen in on one of their scintillating conversations. Enjoy a reflective moment as you uncover the exciting and endearing poetry of Jack Watson. And finally, take a trip into the past as Michael Eddy and Rory Blair wonderfully curate archival material about the extraordinary lives of Margo and Willy Maeckelberghe. Trundle down back to reality as we offer some insights into up-and-coming artists with profiles as well as show reviews and previews.
Before we get started, I want to pause and thank everyone who has been involved in starting this magazine. It’s been a blessing to combine the passion I have for publishing and art with my dearest passion: the love I have for my perfect family, wondrous partner and my generous friends. You mean the world to me. Find your names on the back of the mag, just like a blurb represents and informs the readers about a book, each and every one of you represent this project - it would simply have been impossible without you. Thank you so much. To close, I’d like to mention the genesis of our theme. It appeared while musing through The Living Stones Cornwall by Ithell Colquhoun, 1957. Ithell Colquhoun is a British painter, occultist, poet and author who is intrinsically linked to Cornwall and an excerpt from her book can be found overpage. It seems like a fitting introduction. Yew!
Charlie McQuaid Editor and Publisher
“
Nearer home one often hears, as people tell one the way about Lamorna district, some such phrase as, ‘You pass the ring and thimble.’ At first I took this to be an inn, but none appeared where the map showed it to be, near Chywoone Grove on the way to Newlyn. Even when I knew it for a stone monument, I failed to find it, for antiquities are often coy and will not show themselves to the impatient. But finally I discovered it hiding in the herbage of the road-side– a stone about two feet high, carved in the shape of a thimble, and beside it an upended diamond-shaped slab incised with a ring. Mrs. Cock, late of Nancothan, the ‘valley of the Wood Pigeons,’ supplied me with the folk tale about it: A lady and gentleman were driving by one day in their carriage when the horse shied and over-turned them. The lady was picked up dead and a ring and a thimble fell from her purse; these were carved in stone and set up on the spot as a memorial to her. But it was Lady Tillard who filled in a soberer historical background, telling me that an old mansion once occupied the site of the ‘Ring and Thimble’ which may have formed part of its stonework. A man’s ring of the seventeenth century was actually found there. The farm opposite, Trewarveneth, used to belong to the Godolphin family whose helmets hang in the church at Breage. A small silver ring and thimble are two of the traditional objects hidden in Christmas pudding or Twelfth Night cake, their divinatory significance being marriage and spinsterhood. That cattle may scratch themselves, it is a Cornish habit to place an upfront stone in the middle of the field. Visitors are sometimes teased when they ask about one, thinking it a menir – they are told that when it hears church bells ring, it gets up and walks around the field. Stones that whisper, stones that dance, that play on pipe or fiddle, that tremble at cockcrow, that eat and drink, stones that march at an army – these unhewn slabs of granite hold the secret to the country’s inner life. Colquhoun, Ithell. 1957. The Living Stones Cornwall. Colquhoun, Ithell. 1957. The Living Stones Cornwall.
”
Dan Hollings is painting his place in the world 13
New Beginnings Dan Hollings is painting his place in the world
The Torquay-born, Falmouth-based artist moved around a lot as a kid, never truly settling on one concrete idea of home. This transience forms the backbone of his art: a dedication to exposing the fantastical in the fleeting, before relating it back to his own experiences as a young man still figuring things out. WORDS: NIALL FLYNN
PHOTOGRAPHY: BECKY TYRRELL
Every morning, Dan Hollings wakes up at around 7am and makes the journey from his home in Falmouth to his studio in Redruth, where he’ll try and paint for a solid 12 hours. When he’s not holed up there, though, you might find him idly wandering the streets, observing. The artist, who was born in Torquay but spent most of his childhood in Wales, is a proud people-watcher. For his money, the town from which he works is one of the best places to indulge in such a pastime. “I’m very nosey,” he says. “And Redruth, everyone seems to
know each other. There are a lot of lives.” Dan seeks to explore the surrealness in all of this. As an artist, he uncovers the magic in the mundane, taking the everyday scenes and injecting into them a dose of the strange. His characters, forlorn footie lads and nature-dwelling hypebeasts, see their limbs contort and detach, while landscapes amalgamate as terrain and sea mingle freely. In this sense, his imagination exists somewhere between Lewis Carroll and Poundland Bandit: the world he constructs on the canvas is a fantastical alternate reality, but it’s populated by people wearing Palace.
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14 Dan Hollings is painting his place in the world
Prior to Cornwall, Dan studied for an Art Foundation at the University of South Wales, before moving down to attend Falmouth University. Once there, he worked a series of side jobs in hotels, clubs and supermarkets – prime locations for inspiration – while painting on the side. In 2018, once he finished at Falmouth, things moved quickly. Less than a month after he’d graduated, he was selected by Saatchi Art as one of 34 artists from Europe and America to invest in. He was shortlisted for a Midas Award and the Jackson’s Art Emerging Artist Of The Year (Panel’s Choice) that same year, as well as appearing in a series of group shows. The following year saw him featured in more group exhibitions – in locations ranging from Truro to New York. In 2020, his solo show Big Boys Don’t Cry debuted at That Art Gallery in Bristol. In spring 2021, London’s Alveston Fine Arts played host to another solo exhibition, Thistle Kiss at 4 a.m. “I feel like I’ve been given a really good opportunity where I’m able to paint full-time,” says Dan. “I just want to make the most of that.” In conversation, Dan is affable and easygoing, hesitant to take himself too seriously. But he’s clear on what inspires him. Alongside a desire to take ordinary moments and apply the uncanny, he is also taken with the idea of identity: his place in the world as a young man, his relationship with himself. “Most of the work comes from what I’ve seen on the streets or conversations that I can pick up on. But they’re scenes that I always try to relate back to me. Although they end up being bright and bold, that’s not necessarily how I feel. A lot of the time they can act like a mask. Of course I find myself painting using my emotions – but at the same time I try not to let them all out.”
BEYOND THE RING AND THIMBLE
Niall Flynn: You moved around a bit as a kid, but spent a considerable amount of time in Wales. In that sense, is Wales home? Dan Hollings: I think I struggle with that question, really. I struggle to properly settle into a place. Wales wasn’t really my cup of tea – there wasn’t really a lot there for me as such, not for what I’m into. I didn’t have a huge friendship group or anything like that. That’s why I decided to go to University down in Cornwall and in Falmouth. I felt like I needed a fresh start. I settled in a lot more, especially with the Falmouth art scene. But now that I’ve grown a bit older and spent some more time here, I found that it’s not really meshing again. I think it’s just this repeating idea – of me struggling to find exactly where I want to be. NF: Is it fair to say that comes through in your work? DH: Yeah, definitely. My work always shows different places and locations that I’ve lived. The lack of consistency in that probably speaks to me kind of finding my identity. I always find a lot of Welsh motifs appearing in my work. You’ll see Welsh dragons, Welsh crests. But there are St George’s flags too, and the titles of the works are from places I’ve visited around England.
I always remember, in the nightclub, girls and guys hanging over the railings and spying on the dancefloor. They always reminded me of bats in a cage hanging upside down, just clinging on in the darkness
Dan Hollings is painting his place in the world 15
NF: At what point did art enter your life? dropped everything and threw yourself into art? DH: It started with doodling to be honest. I think it was when I was living DH: It depends really. At the time, I was with my nan –she helped raise me, so really set on doing engineering... I don’t I spent a lot of time around her, while know why to be honest, my Grandad was my mum worked and studied in the into that, so potentially it was a bit of evenings. TV wasn’t really a thing at hers a shock for him. But my mum was not so I found my outlet through drawing. It surprised in the slightest, she obviously wasn’t until I was around 16 that I started just wanted me to be happy and do taking art seriously, though. I took a something I love. They just embraced it, random bunch of subjects when I first and still do now - something I’m really started studying – physics, philosophy, grateful for. maths and art. That’s when I fell in love with it properly. I bunged off the other But back home in Cardiff, it was a very over-masculine sort of place. I felt like all subjects and concentrated on art. the boys went on to do either business NF: Would it have been a shock for or sport. I was pretty much the only people who knew you – when you boy that started doing art. Especially the
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16 Dan Hollings is painting his place in the world
school I was at, it was a rugby school – to be fair, I was happy to get involved in that, but as long as I could pick up my paintbrush and head to my art lessons after. So it probably ended up being a bit of a shock to my age group and peers, rather than my family. NF: Was there a specific moment when you were embarking on this relationship with art where you thought, ‘Actually, this is something I could actually make a living from?’ DH: It was pretty recent to be fair, probably the last couple of years after I finished university. University is a massive safety blanket, you have three years of security before you need to
Redruth is a bit rogue but it’s a good place to paint simply because it’s in Cornwall fend for yourself. There wasn’t really a lot of guidance for how to do your taxes, how to get yourself recognised. But then shows started to come and along with that some money, most of it just went back into my painting. The first painting I sold was from my degree show with Saatchi and it was actually from someone in America. To have someone appreciate my art from so far away was such a surreal and rewarding experience. NF: Identity is a core theme in your work. What do you think your painting says about your relationship with yourself? DH: When you’re young, you feel you don’t really understand what adults do, but the next thing you know you’re the adult that you didn’t understand. I’ve seen that idea come out in my work more recently. I feel that I’m constantly having an ongoing conversation with the canvas. A lot of people talk to therapists or other professionals, but for me I don’t feel comfortable doing that. For me painting is how I can overcome some of my problems. But even that sometimes doesn’t help – it can cover them up and just leave a mess! NF: I can relate. I’m very good at burying things.
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Dan Hollings is painting his place in the world 17
DH: Exactly, it feels like a cliché sometimes. I can be a happy fella, a bit of a joker even overly confident. But that’s sometimes the wrong impression or perception. NF: It can be a bit of a shield, can’t it? But I like that you’ve identified art as a vehicle through which to explore that. Have you always had that relationship with your practice, or is it something that has developed over time? DH: As I’ve grown older, I’ve felt more confident to use my art in that way. I used to bottle it all up but now I have somewhere where I can go and release it. NF: You mention that you’re having an ongoing conversation with the canvas. Is it a one-way dialogue, or does it ever talk back? DH: Sometimes I feel like the paint takes over and afterwards I’m not feeling the same way as the canvas. I often build up layers just by painting over old stuff that I no longer even think about. It’s like they’re not part of me anymore. But there are always parts that come through, even if I’ve tried covering them up, so then I’ll let that through and top it up again. I also find myself using the underpainting of one painting for the next one. It becomes really tactile within the motifs as well as the conversation. NF: You’re a people-watcher. Tell me about that. DH: Yeah. I can’t remember exactly who wrote about this, but I really like the idea of the french word ‘flâneur’. It basically means someone strolling or idling around, picking up on small details, bringing them back and then processing them. I remember I started feeling like I was doing this when I was working in a nightclub for a while. Of course, you see some absolute states there. Or even when I was stacking shelves at Tescos, things that seem mundane in everyday life are the sort of thing that I document. I just take it back to my studio and try to use it in my art. NF: Can you recall any particular scenes that you’ve soaked up and immediately used? DH: I always remember, in the nightclub, girls and guys hanging over the railings and spying on the dancefloor. They always reminded me of bats in a cage hanging upside down, just clinging on in the darkness. I like it when the body and the mind kind of separates a bit – it can cause different, obscure
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18 Dan Hollings is painting his place in the world
shapes, the jelly legs or the arms flailing, I love capturing that. NF: Your studio is in Redruth. What do you like about the town? DH: Redruth is a bit rogue but it’s a good place to paint simply because it’s in Cornwall. There is so much going on within the art scene here, but next to that the people are just down to earth. Cornwall relies massively on tourism but it seems that the tourism and everything that carries alongside it doesn’t really reach Redruth. That can make it pretty insular, which I like to draw on – it gives me a bit of distance from the tourists. I feel like when you’re on holiday it’s almost a performed version of real life, whereas in Redruth I get to see what actually happens on an everyday level. In Cornwall, it’s easy to get drawn in by the beautiful scenery, the stunning lights and the gorgeous seascapes. Artists use that a lot, which is great. But, for me, I like to paint the innards of Cornwall – the people, the conversations, the things that make Cornwall... Cornwall. NF: You mention the art scene. Are you a collaborative person?
I actually find myself sometimes more comfortable talking to people who can be a bit different to me, people that are a bit older maybe BEYOND THE RING AND THIMBLE
DH: I’ve never collaborated and I’m not that would necessarily suit me and my work as it’s pretty personal and intimate. Also, in Redruth, it’s a pretty lonely place and lifestyle – I feel a lot of the time that I’m in solitude. I’m in a complex at the moment with a lot of graphic designers, website builders and general businesses, so this means I don’t really have a lot of
Dan Hollings is painting his place in the world 19
conversations with other painters about art. I kind of like that, though. It goes back to what I was saying earlier, about the idea of being kind of lost or whatever – moving about a lot, being a lonely child – all those things can be a comfort to me. I actually find myself sometimes more comfortable talking to people who can be a bit different to me, people that are a bit older maybe, rather than people my age. Again, that’s why I enjoy people watching as well, I can just sit back and absorb it and just watch it happen in front of me.
You can slap painting on a canvas the way you slap words on paper
NF: I like how you take recognisable scenes and make them feel strange and uncanny. DH: Yeah, I find myself picking up on the details of mundane scenes – I think that is what makes them instantly not mundane. I like pulling out those details and then expanding them to make them more present – whether it’s a little label, a bit of grass or part of a person. I recently found myself painting jeans all the time, simply because I found myself wearing them constantly, putting them on and taking them off again – that repetitiveness suddenly brought them into relevance for me. NF: Given how personal the work is, the fact that other people see the value in it must be doubly rewarding? DH: Because I make work for me and it’s about my life, it’s great that other people also enjoy it as well. I think that’s what art is about – it’s for the person that makes it. You shouldn’t have to worry about
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Dan Hollings is painting his place in the world 21
whether other people are going to like outlets that you feel the urge to branch it. It should be honest for yourself and if out on? other people do like it then it’s a massive bonus. DH: I actually really want to try and sort out a creative space for other people, NF: You write poetry too. What does that like a gallery. In Falmouth, there are the give you that painting doesn’t? galleries and the uni, but they remain a bit separated. I’ve always wanted to create DH: I guess it can be a bit more thought- a space to bring them together a bit more, ful and reflective. There are similarities a space for everyone. Something like that though – you can slap painting on a would be really rewarding for me. I hate canvas the way you slap words on paper. to see people finish an art degree and They are also both methodical, the one have to stop painting. It’s unfortunately difference is that I spend a lot more time the reality of it, but if I can do anything painting. With my poetry, it’s just almost to change that then I will. I guess it quick scribblings of what I’m thinking comes from the fact that my mum always onto a page, then I’ll see if those words wanted to make sure I was okay – she’s can work together at all. But I get the a role model, she always put others same feeling from completing a painting before herself, so it’s what I want to do for people around me if I can, a chance as I do a poem. to give back.t. I didn’t really have loads NF: Are there any other creative outlets of opportunities in Wales with regards to the arts and I feel like so many people you’d like to branch out into? miss out. So if I can give someone else an NH: Do you have any other creative opportunity then I would love that.
@danhollings www.danhollingsart.com
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Hide, Robe, and Tongue
Hide, Robe and Tounge 23
The near extinction of the Southern Plains Bison and the decline of the Wild West
“One way to stop seeing trees, or rivers, or hills, only as ‘natural resources’ is to class them as fellow beings.” – Ursula K. Leguin, Kinfolk A keystone species of the American western frontier endures in the conservation area of Caprock Canyon State Park. The park is situated in an area of Texas called the “Big Empty,” a swath of eleven counties in a state of post-industrial rurality and population decline since the 1930s.
WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY: CHARLOTTE FOREMAN
E
stimates suggest that the number of bison in the Great Plains, a broad expanse of flatland spanning the Central United States, once numbered almost sixty million1. On their infamous expedition, Lewis and Clark reached the Great Plains in late August of 1804, and reported that the tremendous herds “darkened the whole plains.” William T. Hornaday, one of the co-founders of the American Bison Society, attests, “They lived and moved as no other quadrupeds ever have, in great multitudes like grand armies in review, covering scores of
square miles at once. They were so numerous they frequently stopped boats in the river, threatened to overwhelm travelers on the plains, and in later years drained locomotives and cars.” As late as 1800, bison numbered almost 20 million. Even by 1850, less than 10 million still roamed the Great Plains, and yet by 1890, the Great Plains population of bison dwindled at less than a thousand. It took about thirteen years, from 1811-1883, to bring the animal to near-extinction2. Not only a testament to the rapidity with which the United States economy industrialized, the mass slaughter of the bison on the Great Plains also sounded the death knell of the Old West as we knew it:
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a frontier founded upon self-sufficiency, individualism, small-scale agriculture, and mythic American democracy in praxis. The region is known as “the Big Empty,” a large swath of the Texas state “moving towards oblivion,” its population steadily declining since 1930. The region’s bison remain nominal, especially in regards to those of pure breed, and many are sequestered to conservation areas or commercial herds. While Caprock Canyon State Park in Quitaque, Texas houses around 200 Southern Plains Bison – the Texas State Bison Herd, comprised of descendents of the original Charles Goodnight herd – conservation efforts that reintroduce bison to their former range are often purely nostalgic, as it has proven difficult to reintegrate the bison as a productive member in its environment. A facsimile of the old frontier remains amid the vestiges of the Wild West – a “scene of rapid and lawless resource extraction” where “quick profits, quick exits” drove it into its very dissolution3. While indigenous Comanche people did hunt the bison for many years before Euro-Americans arrived on the Plains, they were much more resourceful in their use of the animal, and their hunting techniques only allowed for a few bison to be killed at a time. The introduction of horses as a hunting technology improved upon specialized bison-hunting techniques, but it wasn’t until Euro-American professional hide hunters arrived on the Plains that the mass slaughter truly began. With weaponry superior to the Comanche’s spears, they were able to kill over 100 bison at any one time, only to harvest their tongues, hides, and at times, their bones, for fertilizer4. That is, the Euro-American hide hunters did not have sustenance as their goal; rather, they sought to turn a profit on the coveted bison hide and robe. A single hide would sell for about $2.50
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each, translating to about $68.00 today, meaning that in a single excursion, a band of hunters could earn the equivalent of about $10,0005. Bison hides would be made into machine belts, and their robes into rugs or blankets. Tourist potential in bison hunts also encouraged the slaughter of the bison. For privileged Easterners and European royals, the nostalgic value of the mythic frontier drew them to buy into extravagant bison hunts, where grazing bison made easy targets from the windows of newly-built railcars. The Northern Pacific Railroad especially capitalized on patrons’ interest in and sentimentality towards the bison, and sometimes served surplus bison meat slaughtered in Montana in their dining cars. “The buffalo is the most profitable farm animal in America today,” Charles Goodnight attested, accounting for why Euro-American development of the western grasslands was largely incompatible with the preservation of the keystone species of the pre-conquest plains6. Without the initial preservationist impulse of Mary Ann Goodnight, the wife of cattle rancher Charles “Chas” Goodnight, we would not have a pure Southern Plains Bison alive today. Charles Goodnight is known for bringing the first herd of cattle to, and starting the first cow ranch in the panhandle of Texas, the rectangular piece of land
It wasn’t until Euro-American professional hide hunters arrived on the Plains that the mass slaughter truly began. With weaponry superior to the Comanche’s spears, they were able to kill over 100 bison at any one time, only to harvest their tongues, hides, and at times, their bones, for fertilizer. That is, the EuroAmerican hide hunters did not have sustenance as their goal
Hide, Robe and Tounge 25
at the top of the state. In early news publications, he is described as profoundly interested in the progress and advance of civilization, and a friend of the indigenous Comanche who first populated the area. Goodnight is largely responsible for the area’s development, in early correspondence encouraging business partners in New York to come out to the Texas panhandle, assuring them that if they didn’t strike it rich in oil, they were sure to find a great profit in land and cattle. In an article about Charles Goodnight, James W. Freeman writes: “At the close of the Civil War, Mr. Goodnight knew every watering place in West Texas, and was so well acquainted with the topography of the country that he could direct his way anywhere over a vast region even by the light of the stars. He never had a compass, and was never lost on the prairie, although hundreds of times he was alone, many miles from his companions. In his opinion, a woodsman is born, not made.”7
To be sure, Charles Goodnight appeals to our modern-day imagination of the American cowboy: independent, self-sufficient, spirited, courageous, and full of grit and a knowledge of the land. He is often celebrated for his work in the Texas panhandle, most notably for his conservationist efforts to save the Southern Plains Bison and early experiments in cross-breeding the bison with cattle to create a hybrid herd. More optimal for beef production, he called this hybrid species a “cattalo,” now more commonly known as “beefalo.” However, not all agree that Charles should be credited for the formation of the Goodnight bison herd. In her early literary production entitled “She Saved the Buffaloes,” Annie Dyer Nunn calls for us to credit Mary Ann for the conservation of the Southern Plains Bison, rather than Charles. Nunn writes:
deep rumble of the roaming buffalo or the howl of a coyote was the only sound to break the stillness, and you will have some idea of the first Panhandle home of Mrs. Charles Goodnight, the woman who saved the Buffalo for Texas.”
Mary Ann was the first white woman to settle on the frontier of Texas, at first leading a lonely life in the sprawling expanse amongst livestock and roughhewn men, but eventually she came to love her life on the plains. “Range code” allowed ranch residents to leave their doors unlocked, as it was understood that cowboys would come by unattended homes and help themselves to the food inside8. Mary Ann grew to love playing hostess for these men, and extending friendship toward the native Comanche and Quanah by offering up lunch or supper to weary travelers. Disheartened by the decline she saw in bison numbers “Picture in your mind a rude log cabin on the plains, Mary Ann asked her in the heart of the Palo Duro Canyon, husband to capture some orphan calves a place of appalling loneliness where the from the southern herd in 1878. Charles
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thought the idea to be wholly impractical, but he too was sympathetic to the bison’s plight; laying in bed at night, the couple heard orphan bison calves bawling, “crying for mothers slaughtered during the day.”9 By then, the millions of buffalo that comprised the Southern herd were gone – all that remained were a pitiful group of about 150, that had fled to a secluded corner of the Palo Duro Canyon. He successfully captured several calves, and raised them on JA Ranch, where he worked at the time. While Charles first doubted Mary Ann’s idea to safeguard some members of the Southern Plains Bison herd, the Goodnight herd came to be one of the largest and best known bison herds in America. After Mary Ann and Charles passed, the Goodnight Ranch and herd changed hands several times, and there was even talk of killing the final members of the herd in a “last great buffalo hunt.” Public outcry thankfully halted this effort, and the herd remained in the Palo Duro. Occasionally, the bison escaped the canyon, and after this had happened enough times, they were permitted to stay on the JA Ranch. In 1994, German conservationist Wolfgang Frey contacted Texas Parks and Wildlife, having calculated that the Goodnight herd held a rare genetic marker that indicates they are the last group of Southern Plains Bison remaining in North America. Later that year, Texas Parks and Wildlife accepted the donation of fifty head of bison from the JA Ranch, a herd that came to be known as the Texas State Bison Herd, housed in Caprock Canyon State Park. Since then, the park has undertaken conservation efforts to not only preserve the Southern Plains Bison, but also return their habitat to its natural order, through vegetation studies, grazing control, prescribed fire, and the injection of herbicide into invasive species.10 In his 1893 thesis, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Frederick Jackson Turner asserts that the core values of American democracy and individualism are rooted in the rugged conditions of the western frontier, rather than in the business deals struck between privileged Easterners over boys’ club luncheons. It’s no small coincidence that the values of the American West reflect those of American patriotism at the height of the Revolutionary War, the very values that the United States was founded upon. The same penchant for rugged individualism, self-sufficiency, courage, grit, and democracy allowed Euro-American settlers in the northeast to even conceive of statehood outside the British Empire, let alone set course along a path toward independence in a sprawling continent, barely yet explored by the Europeans. In fact, Anna Tsing writes that the development of a productive frontier heavily relies upon settlers’ blind faith, the very impossibility of its conception. She writes, “Frontier culture is a conjuring act because it creates the wild and spreading region-
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ality of its imagination...A distinctive feature of this frontier regionality is its magical vision; it asks participants to see a landscape that doesn’t exist, at least not yet…”11 To be sure, America in its entirety was at once a kind of frontier – the prospect of development and advancement in an otherwise seemingly unoccupied place. Of course, after the genocide of native people upon European settlement in North America, we now know this to be a perilous train of thought, but it cannot be denied that imagination played heavily into the very possibility of a United States, and so too the Western frontier. An investment in the myth of American individualism inspired Euro-Americans to expand into the western frontier, and an investment in the very same ideas of self-sufficiency and grit keep families in largely abandoned, rural towns in the Plains today. These families endure against the odds of hardscrabble land, a merciless climate, and continual decline and depopulation as towns relinquish their residents to surrounding larger, urban areas. These are the conditions of the Wild West today, in a state of slow decay in the shadow of a rapidly industrializing economy. A shift from small-scale, family farming, to large-scale, mechanized commercial farming, means that modern-day farming requires only a small percentage of the human labor it once did. Many farmers have been laid off or been forced to take up service jobs in town to sustain their livelihoods. Yet, the imagination of the frontier is so powerful that the legacy of the West endures as the image of American heritage. The keystone species of the bison, as he is preserved in Caprock Canyon
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and three-foot long tortoises; petrified wood; reptilian teeth; and veins of minerals, including gypsum, calcite, geodes, and jasper. One can’t help but imagine textbook reproductions of T-rexes and stegosauri stampeding the place. Yet here we were, in four-wheel drive, seeing the ancient expanse from the comfort of our SUV. 12,000 years ago, the giant bowls of these canyons held now-extinct mammoth and giant bison, as well as camel and horses – the very same terrain on which our fellow campers were hurrying to hook up their campers, grill cheeseburgers, and crush beer cans beneath their boots before the evening storm. We had come to see the Texas State Bison Herd, a conservation effort in Caprock Canyon State Park to preserve the last of the true Southern Plains Bison. If you’ve never heard the classic cowboy song “Home on the Range,” the “unofficial anthem” of the American West, it goes a little something like this:
State Park, is symbolic of the decline of the Wild West. The conservation of the Southern Plains Bison is nostalgic for a time when the bison was integrated in Plains life, before his very survival was antithetical to ideas of modern progress and industry. That lore lives on, heavily reliant upon a tourist economy, showing just how precarious, just how outmoded, those values our country was founded upon really are.
W
hen we entered Caprock Canyon State Park, we saw no bison. We had just made the seven-hour haul up the Texas state highway, fueled by gas station burritos and Monster energy drinks, and gray skies loomed overhead: the enemy of the budget tent camper. Uninspired to pitch our tent in the drizzle that began not too long after we checked in, we decided on a scenic drive around the park, binoculars in hand, to see if we could spot one out in the canyons and bluffs. These “red beds” are so-termed after the terracotta, orange, and white hues of the shales, sandstones, siltstones, and mudstones of the geologic formations exposed by headwater erosion through the canyons. The park is located along the Caprock Escarpment, a long, narrow rocky formation as high as 1,000 feet that forms a natural transition between the flat, high plains of the Llano Estacado to the west and the lower Rolling Plains to the east. Shaped by the wind, rain, and streams that course through it, the canyon system boasts almost 230 million years of geologic history: layers upon layers of caliche; sediment; fossils of giant amphibians, sabertoothed tigers, shovel-jawed mastodons, giraffe-like camels,
Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam, Where the deer and the antelope play, Where seldom is heard a discouraging word And the skies are not cloudy all day The Southern Plains Bison are the very same alluded to in the verse above (I should mention that in Northern America, the terms “bison” and “buffalo” are used interchangeably, despite the fact that the only true buffalo – Cape buffalo and Water buffalo – are found only in Africa and Asia). Other Southern Plains Bison do exist outside the park, in mostly commercial herds, but they’ve undoubtedly been crossbred in the past hundred years. Railroad construction between 1867-1883 separated the heart of the buffalo range, resulting in two different herds, the Northern Plains Bison and the Southern Plains Bison12. The fragmentation of the herds had a drastic impact on genetic diversity, especially as the herds were hunted to near extinction and preservationists, while probably saving the bison from extinction overall, crossbred bison just to keep the numbers up. This began the trend of bison conservation with a goal of preserving the species not as a functioning part of the plains environment, but as a curiosity, a tourist attraction.13 We’d driven the whole stretch of winding road through the park, and still hadn’t spotted a single bison. The rain by then had let up, so we decided to go set up camp, thinking we might then have time for a short hike before dark. Piles of bison poop, the size of dinner plates, in the brush behind the site – unnerving, but promising. The sheer size of its shit is a clue to the bison’s hulking size, which can be anywhere between 815-910 kilograms. A Southern Plains Bison can run
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28 Hide, Robe, and Tongue
up to 48 kilometers an hour, and a fourteenth pair of ribs (one more pair than standard cattle) supports its hump, the huge shoulder muscle that supports its head and allows it to plow through deep snow in winter. Bison wallows, bowllike depressions in the earth made when bison roll around on the dry ground to alleviate skin irritations, prevent insects from biting them, or to cover themselves in a layer of dirt to shield themselves from ticks and lice, create mini-wetlands, enhancing the growth of prairie vegetation that require moist conditions. Even their hoofprints, when they collect water, are large enough to host these alternative habitats.14 We hiked out about a mile and a half into the exposed sandstone of the canyon. Early Mexican travelers who passed through the area had a common saying: “Hay sierras debajo de los llanos.” There are mountains below the plains. It was true; steep inclines preceded rock and
earth slides down the other side, the path winding through hills of red shale. The moist clay beneath our feet dampened the sound of our footsteps. Every once in a while, we stumbled across a stream through the canyon, one that had clearly been there for thousands, if not millions of years, judging by residual grooves in the stone and mud, and the accompanying chains of alluvial vegetation. If there is anything a canyon system teaches, it is that the earth is a workable mass, as subject to influence as we are to nature’s delegation. Earth talks to itself, and earth answers back. The canyon system is the terrific evidence of that argument, a network of relations. Every quarter mile or so, we spotted another pile of bison excrement. We glanced around nervously, as if the colossal thing could be hiding in the surrounding brush, just waiting for some young urbanites to spook. By five in the afternoon, we were disheartened.
When we entered Caprock Canyon State Park, we saw no bison. We had just made the seven-hour haul up the Texas state highway, fueled by gas station burritos and Monster energy drinks, and gray skies loomed overhead BEYOND THE RING AND THIMBLE
We’d finished the hike, and still not one bison to speak of. Time for a drink, we thought. We decided to drive into town, a generous term for the municipality of Quitaque that houses Caprock Canyon State Park. Pronounced “kitty-quay,” the town derives its name from an indigenous language, meaning, “the end of the trail.” A 2010 census enumerates a total population of 411 inhabitants. We climbed into our car and wound our way towards the entrance of the park, where we almost choked on our Gatorade. The bison. At least a hundred of them, in a swath of pasture near the park headquarters, gnawing on prairie grasses: blue gramma, sand dropseed, and little bluestem. A few of them rolled around in the dirt like huge puppies. It was almost comical to see the tricked-out pick-up trucks entering the park in the distance behind these ancient things. We joked the reason the park kept telling us to keep our forty-five meters’ distance wasn’t because they are easily aggravated, but because we might discern their gigantic puppethood. I mean, they just looked so prehistoric – those horns? The calves were scattered about the field like kids around a television after school, listlessly awaiting their parents’ return from work. The bison did move incredibly languidly, as if they were salaried to graze the sprawling expanse in time with the sun, migrating from a designated prairie maintenance area in the east by morning, to the pasture adjacent to the park headquarters in the west by night. Because they feed mostly on grass species and selectively avoid other plants, bison have significant influence over prairie biodiversity. Because of their selective eating patterns, they leave certain areas ungrazed, allowing for a broader representation of plant species on the prairie. Their waste acts as a natural fertilizer, and promotes the continued growth of native prairie grasses. Near
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eradication of the bison, whose grazing favored the dominance of short grasses, allowed invasive, taller grasses to expand westward. Part of Caprock Canyon’s conservation efforts for the Texas State Bison Herd include prairie restoration initiatives to repair the deleterious environmental effects of the near-extinction of the bison on the plains. These efforts aim to return the prairie to the conditions closest to what they were when bison dominated the plains prior to the late 19th century, and are integral to decreasing the presence of invasive species like juniper and mesquite, woody vegetation that the bison shies away from when grazing.15 The fact that we discovered the bison exactly when we weren’t looking for them is actually quite telling of the bison’s migratory patterns. Migratory animals move in predictable, often seasonal patterns to well-defined food sources or places for specific activities, such as
breeding or calving. For the bison, this is not so. Often called “grassland nomads,” bison move in ways that appear almost random for human observers, in search of food or other specific needs. They will travel ridiculous distances in search of grass, a behaviour that is probably largely responsible for keeping them from domestication and exploitation through breeding efforts.16 These endeavors are thwarted by the fact bison totally resist human control, a fact that has earned them the title of “monarch of the plains.” William T. Hornaday, who spearheaded the American Bison Society in 1905 with Teddy Roosevelt and Ernest Harold Baynes, was the chief taxidermist at the Smithsonian, and understood the compromised ethicality of keeping the bison in such confined captivity. “In captivity he fails to develop as finely as in his wild state, and with the loss of liberty he becomes a tame-looking animal,” he wrote in 1887. Even with a total expanse
of 300 acres in the original grazing area, Caprock Canyon decided to emancipate the bison herd from these confines so they could graze the entirety of the park freely in 2004. Caprock Canyon’s decision to release the Texas State Bison Herd from their designated grazing area is critical in distinguishing modern-day conservationist efforts from those initial efforts of the American Bison Society. Original advocates of bison preservation were western ranchers who hypothesized ownership of the last remaining bison could be profitable, and elite easterners who had an interest in replicating the mythic, masculine frontier. That is, the interests of the American Bison Society were not ecological, to an end of saving the bison itself, but rather economical and zoological. To the American Bison Society, the bison was symbolic of untamed nature, the frontier, and masculinity, and their central objective was to
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“bring men back to nature.” In the late 19th and 20th centuries, an aggressively masculine pop culture arose in reaction to the mechanization of life in an industrializing society. Because of this, preservation efforts became predominantly seen as a male concern; preserving the grit and valor perceived as central to American identity demanded a certain manliness. Privileged easterners romanticized the “hardier days” when bison roamed the plains, a sentiment Teddy Roosevelt evoked when he asserted, “The preservation of one icon of the old west – the bison – would help to preserve another – the cowboy – at the very time when some Americans feared that the disappearance of frontier conditions threatened American culture.”17 On the other hand, Caprock Canyon’s decision to release the bison from a small grazing area and into the larger expanse of their natural habitat prioritizes the needs and comfort of the bison, as well as maintains as its goal the restoration of the naturally biodiverse Great Plains. The Kent Wildlife Trust’s initiative to bring a European relative of the now-extinct steppe bison back to the United Kingdom after a 6,000 year hiatus also exhibits this same commitment to the welfare of the species and bioabundance of the country. By spring 2022, the Wilder Blean project will encourage reintegration of the bison into the wild woodland environment by placing several initial bison into a 150 hectare (370 acres) area in Kent, which will come to span a 500 hectare (1,236 acre) area as the herd grows.18 This environmentalist project demonstrates a worldwide shift in conservation efforts from those that center human interests and exploitation, to those that prioritize kinship with other organisms as a philosophy of conservation. Patricia Nelson Limerick, one of the leading historians of the American West, also undertakes an analysis of bison conservation revolving around the symbology of the bison in Euro-American and indigenous tribal cultures. She argues that every culture has some kind of creation myth that speaks to its members’ origin and why they’ve been “chosen by providence for a special destiny.”19 For indiginous Plains tribes that roamed western Texas, such as the Comanche, the bison was a symbol of prosperity – all life revolved around the animal, for which as high as eighty-seven non-food uses have been recognized. When the Comanche slaughtered a buffalo, the meat was eaten; the hides were made into footwear, clothing, flooring, and sleeping mats; the sinew was used for sewing and binding; and the bones were reshaped into needles, eating utensils, and other tools. On the other hand, for Euro-Americans, the bison, “the living lion of the American West,” was a symbol of old frontier life, a masculine project that prized self-sufficiency and expansion westward through Manifest Destiny. Frederick Jackson Turner expounds upon the centrality of
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colonization and settlement westward in American identity in his thesis, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” stating, “Up to our own day, American History has been to a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development.” Turner does well to introduce the idea of the frontier as a subject of conceptual analysis. The predominating narratives about the western frontier speak about it as then-unsettled land to be conquered, developed, and annexed as part of Euro-American civilization. These narratives perpetuate the historical erasure of indigenous histories and ameliorate the insidious actions that early Euro-American settlers undertook in order to seize the Plains lands. The very idea that land yet to be settled by Euro-Americans is land for our taking, is early American exceptionalism at work. “So long as free land exists, the opportunity for a competency exists, and economic power secures political power,” Turner writes.20 Consideration of the frontier in the context of American exceptionalism can help us understand the continuity of the United States’ ongoing imperialist project, and how this project has located itself as the nexus of American identity since the country’s very beginnings. In her book Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection, Anna Tsing describes
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the idea of a frontier as, “an imaginative project capable of molding both places and processes...not a philosophy but rather a series of historically nonlinear leaps and skirmishes that come together to create their own intensification and proliferation.” Indeed, a frontier is not solely a physical site or a philosophy alleging the promise of geographic expansion or ideological innovation. Geographic discourse about place often insists that humans be at the center of human geography discussion and that controlled, rational discussion about place is less productive than more phenomenological approaches that afford subjective analyses of place. Pragmatists, who insist that ideas like “absolute truth” and “ultimate reality” are not very useful, also doubt that there is a single way a place can truly be. Therefore, for the pragmatist, inquiry about place is less about identifying an objective reality and more about “finding creative solutions to human problems within a given social and cultural situation.”21 Place, then, we can consider also as the summation of narratives that surround it, as well the gaps between those narratives. Besides its conditions as a geographical site, the frontier is the ideological prototype of the American exceptionalism that would characterize American politics for years to come. In the case of the western frontier, Manifest Destiny, a 19th century belief that the expansion of the US across both
American continents was both deserved and inevitable, was the driving force of Euro-American violence on the Plains. In 1835, Dr. Lyman Beecher wrote, “It is equally plain that the religious and political destiny of our nation is to be decided in the West… let no man at the East quiet himself and dream of liberty, whatever may become of the West...her destiny is our destiny,” (Turner). In 1870, the paradoxical idea arose that the bison, albeit a revered symbol of the American West, was a barrier to Manifest Destiny – because the bison was the main life source for the Plains tribes, once the bison was eradicated, native people would be forced to starve or relocate to reservations. Native people would abandon their “nomadic, warlike ways” and the prairie would become an accessible resource at Euro-Americans’ disposal. Hunting bison was duly an effort to thwart Plains tribes’ subsistence on buffalo, which allowed them to “resist all efforts to put him forward in the work of civilization.” That is, if the bison was a gateway to self-sufficiency for the Plains tribes, then spelling the end of the animal would mean a forced domestication of native peoples by the white man, into his idea of a productive, capitalist society. Turner describes the American West as “the meeting point between savagery and civilization,” a semantic dichotomy that always dignifies the priorities of Euro-Americans over those of the Plains tribes, specifically the Comanche, who bore the brunt of settler violence and forced assimilation into Euro-American society. A result of the confidence derived from the declaration of independence from the British Empire, as well as the conquest and settlement of the East, the brazen philosophy of Manifest Destiny has not expired with the successful annexation of the West, but merely translated into contemporary American exceptionalism. This insidious idea that America is inherently superior to other nations and therefore responsible for “bettering” the world has permitted a low-grade colonialism to continue in the modern day. The annexation of Hawaii and interventions resulting in expanding dominion over Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines, and Guam are all exemplary of this attitude. The period following 9/11 and the start of the Iraq War saw the reinvigoration and justification of this idea amongst the American public and media. “American Empire: Get Used to It,” reads a New York Times Sunday Magazine headline from January 3rd, 2003. The phrase “American Empire” appeared over 1000 times in news stories from November 2002–April 2003, justifying invasion and disruption of foreign states by dint of our supposed superiority.22 The frontier in transformation and intensification always inheres disturbance or destruction to satellite parties. Never is the frontier more active than when it is threatened
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or when adversary forces obstruct its use and proliferation. The project of western expansion had as its cost the forced assimilation and slaughter of the Comanche and Quanah people and the near-total extinction of Plains bison. Similarly, the prospect of the new “technofrontier” has as its cost the livelihoods of the blue-collar workers in the Big Empty, a collection of small towns without quite as many service industry opportunities to transition into as larger urban areas a few hours away.
U
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The project of western expansion had as its cost the forced assimilation and slaughter of the Comanche and Quanah people and the near-total extinction of Plains bison
Park interpreter, Le’ann Pigg
pon arrival at Caprock Canyon, I spoke with the park interpreter, Le’ann Pigg, to introduce myself and the piece I was working on, and see if she had any insight she might be able to share from her years working at the park. Le’ann studied anthropology in college, and started working at the park as an intern under the previous park interpreter eleven years ago. She has been working at the park ever since, and was promoted to park interpreter several years ago. The goal of the park interpreter is to develop an emotional connection between the park, trails, natural resources, and visitors, through various activities including programs, signs, and exhibits. I spoke to Le’ann in the park gift shop before a life-size replica of a bison, complete with faux fur. I could tell the run-down she gave me was one she had done many times before – I prodded her for more information, including details about the park’s relationship with JA Ranch, a subject that seemed to leave a bad taste in her mouth, but that she did not expand upon. After I explained the goal of my research, she said decidedly, “I know exactly where you oughta go.” She explained that a replication of the Goodnights’ house still stood as a tourable historic site in Claude, Texas, about an hour from the park. Our mission was
clear. On our way out of the park, I spotted Le’ann in a field of prairie dogs, gesturing wildly to a group of families with small children. The bison chomped boredly at the field in the distance. We first passed through Quitaque, a sleepy little town consisting of a few old houses, a chain gas station called Allsups, a baseball field where Little League now gathered, and a single kitschy lunch counter called the “Bison Cafe.” Each town we passed through on our way to Claude boasted the same eerie, off-white water tower with the town name in bold, black letters. The next town’s read “TURKEY,” introducing Turkey, Texas, a small, derelict town with streets lined with abandoned storefronts. On some properties, windows were shattered, vegetation cropping up inside, and others seemed as if the owners had shut up shop one day and just never returned, chairs stacked on tables as if to sweep at the end of the night, a film of dust coating the entire interior. Operational businesses were few and far between. Tony’s Ice Cream also peddled Mexican dishes, cheeseburgers, and the southwestern staple, “Frito pie,” and Hotel Turkey offers a lodging option for those visiting Caprock Canyon State Park who do not care to camp. Several churches also populate the town and seem to be operational. Turkey is located in Hall County, which demarcates the start of the Big Empty, and seemed to be a model of each of the towns we’d pass through between sprawling cattle ranches, expanses of canyon, and earth slides. Every forty kilometers or so, we’d come up on another desolate town predominated by corporate chain restaurants, gas stations, and churches. It was clear that job opportunities at these national chains were the economic safeguard to communities that formerly subsisted off of small-scale farming. If residents had not yet relocated to larger,
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urban areas to find a job outside of agriculture, they had transitioned into one of a handful of local service positions. Kilometers upon kilometers of abandoned or inactive ranchland and roadside crucifixes constructed of PVC pipe signalled a landscape in a state of irreversible decline, reliant upon a trust in higher providence and an investment in the myth of rugged individualism to endure the inevitable death of place. “The Big Empty” is a term first coined by Jim Corder in his 1988 memoir, Lost in West Texas, to describe the area in Texas west of the Cross Timbers, east of the Caprock, north of the Colorado River basin, and south of the Red River. The area encompasses eleven counties in the Great Plains region of Texas that have been in irreversible decline since the 1930’s. Down to a quarter of their population sizes in the heyday of the early to mid-twentieth century, these counties
are on the precipice of total abandonment, their residents barely “wringing a livelihood from the wind-blasted plains of north central Texas.” To be sure, residents of, say, Hall County – once numbering 16,966 inhabitants in 1930, down to 3,353 in 2010 – do not remain to turn a profit off the once-rich soil, or the grazing capacity of the sprawling plains. In the age of the technofrontier, that boundless expanse made possible by industrial technology, post-industrial rurality in these counties has seen the economic transition from productivist agriculture to, “a service economy heavily reliant on government employment and subsidy and to multinational dominion over extractive industry and agricultural production. In 1982, average farms in the Big Empty counties were twice what they were in the ‘50’s, and the number of farmers had dropped drastically, as large-scale, commercial farming became
increasingly popular. Layoffs in the oil field and uncertainty in family farming drove residents to cede family ranchland, passed down for generations, to multinational corporate farms, and take up jobs as attendants at chain gas stations, hardware store clerks, mechanics, or other service work. Yet, these residents, beat down by the scarcity of the plains in the time of increasingly mechanized farming, choose to stay. But why? “When capital has moved on, the importance of place is more clearly revealed,” Raymond Williams writes in “Decentralism and the Politics of Place.” Many claim familial ties keep them in towns with populations numbering in the hundreds, schoolhouses teetering on the brink of closure, and the nearest grocery store some thirty miles away. These individuals express an obligation to “work the family land,” even as the reality of earning a livelihood from
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this occupation becomes increasingly untenable and nostalgic. An affinity for country values – the sense of mutual obligation, where one’s word is vow; intimacy with one’s neighbors; the centrality of the family; and a sense of self-sufficiency – keep these Americans from the talons of urban anonymity. Even while often in a position of dependence on government to subsidize their livelihoods, these residents convey a “latent petit bourgeois disdain for government intervention and progressive politics,” prizing a perceived individual liberty, personal privacy, and self-sufficiency out on the Great Plains.23 Certainly, there are still those American citizens who traverse the Wild West, who believe in the abundance of the mythic frontier – a fantasy no more or less real than the promise of prosperity on Wall Street. When we arrived in Claude, the replica of the Goodnight house was closed, so we decided to drive out to the Goodnight cemetery, where Charles and Mary Ann Goodnight are buried, along with many of their relatives. The cemetery was aptly
situated between ranch houses and green pasture, the cattle bucking at our Subaru – clearly, folks didn’t come down here all that often. Their tombstone towered over all others in the cemetery, paying respects to the couple that first settled this region of the West, befriending the native Comanche and Quanah people, and salvaging the vestiges of the near-extinct Southern Plains Bison. Their tombstone, as well as those of their relatives, were fenced off, and a series of old bandannas tied to the chain links – in lieu of flowers – wavered in the wind. The gravesite was modest but dignified, and it was evident that although not many knew about the Goodnights, they were revered within their own community to this day. “After each shot the animal fell but got up again looking for trouble, until the fatal shot was fired,” an early publication narrates the brutish endurance of the bison.24 As the frontier buckles under the weight of its own intensification and proliferation, the myth of the American West perseveres, shape-shifting nostalgically to weather the conditions of the hunt.
1 Dolph, James A., and C. Ivar Dolph. "The American Bison: His Annihilation and Preservation." Montana: The Magazine of Western History 25, no. 3 (Summer 1975): 14-25. | 2 Lueck, Dean. "The Extermination and Conservation of the American Bison." The Journal of Legal Studies 31, no. S2 (June 2002): S609-S652. | 3 Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. 9th ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. | 4 Lueck, "Extermination and Conservation." S609-S652. | 5 Dolph and Dolph, "Annihilation and Preservation," 14-25. | 6 Isenberg, "Nostalgia, Profit, and Preservation," 179-96. | 7 "Literary Productions concerning Mary Ann and Charles Goodnight, undated." Box 2Q74. Charles Goodnight Papers. Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX. | 8 Carnes, Rebecca Jan Bright. "The Modern Cowboy Folktale in West Texas." Master's thesis, Texas Tech University, 1989. | 9 Cogdell, Toy. "Caprock Canyon Travel Guide." Caprock Canyon Travel Guide. | 10 Roe, Russell. "At Home on the Range Again." Texas Park and Wildlife, March 2011. | 11 Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. 9th ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. | 9 Cogdell, Toy. "Caprock Canyon Travel Guide." Caprock Canyon Travel Guide. | 10 Roe, Russell. "At Home on the Range Again." Texas Park and Wildlife, March 2011. | 11 Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. 9th ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. | 12 Cogdell, Toy. "Caprock Canyon Travel Guide." Caprock Canyon Travel Guide. | 13 Roe, Russell. "At Home on the Range Again." Texas Park and Wildlife, March 2011. | 14 Cogdell, "Caprock Canyon Travel Guide." | 15 Cogdell, "Caprock Canyon Travel Guide." | 16 Lueck, " Extermination and Conservation," S609-S652. | 17 Isenberg, "Nostalgia, Profit, and Preservation," 179-96. | 18 Carrington, Damian. "Wild bison to return to UK for first time in 6,000 years." The Guardian, July 10, 2020. | 19 Isenberg, "Nostalgia, Profit, and Preservation," 179-96 | 20 Turner, Frederick Jackson, and Harold P. Simonson. 1963. The Significance of the Frontier in American History. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co. | 21 Underwood, Robert Reed. "Memory and Continuity amidst Irreversible Decline in the Texas Big Empty." Master's thesis, University of North Texas, 2016. | 22 Lake, David A. "Escape from the State of Nature: Authority and Hierarchy in World Politics." International Security 32, no. 1 (July 2007): 47-79. | 23 Underwood, "Memory and Continuity amidst Irreversible Decline," Master's thesis. | 24 Letter, "Goodnight-Seymour Letters 1917-1929," n.d. Box 2R1. Charles Goodnight Papers 1882-1939. Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.
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Everlasting: Ben Reader and Emma Rose Kennedy 37
EVERLASTING Ben Reader and Emma Rose Kennedy were born, raised and educated 4,205 miles apart. Their formative years were ultimately completely different, Emma grew from the swamps of Miami and Ben slithered into the rocks of Penzance. But, despite their differences, after spending some time with them, I was fascinated to witness the intrinsic similarities that these two true artists hold.
The art, understandably, is often the first impression fellow artists reveal to each other. It’s an impression that goes far beyond anything conversation can supply. Emma describes herself as: “One of the 21st Century’s slowest painters”. Her meditative and meticulous practice explores moments of quiet and stillness- when the mind slips to daydream and reality gives way to something else. Drawing inspiration from myths, legends, and art history, her small works on aluminum act as two-way mirrors, quietly bridging the physical and dream worlds- even if only for a moment. Ben’s work combines figurative portraiture and elements taken from both folklore and local history into a unique and instantly recognisable style. He specialises in the human form with painted portraits of a huge array of society: sweethearts, rogues and raconteurs. His self-portraits are intense as well as being full of character and humour. It’s humour, human form and their need to live in the presence while glancing back at the past which seems to bind the two so strongly. In one word, they are romantics. Meeting on the coasts of Portugal, they spent the intense summer days painting and the mild nights galavanting across the cobbled streets. Up to mischief that isn’t suitable for print, meeting curious characters along the way and building up a repertoire of shared memories. As certain as the rising and falling of the tides, the two close friends grew apart. Emma pursued her MA at Slade and
PHOTOGRAPHY: BECKY TYRRELL
Ben created a series of board games in various mediums as well as painting. However, the gulf stream is a constant and omnipotent current, the two were plucked from their separate waypoints and found themselves together once more. West Penwith was the location of their next chapter. Just as in Portugal, the galavanting and mischief continued, but in a more subdued fashion. Perhaps it was lockdown, age creeping in or the fact that a bottle of wine was £7 in England up from £2 in Portugal! These all played their part, however the pair of them came to a more simple and elegant conclusion to their slight change in behaviour: the weather. West Penwith was a more soothing tempress, it has an endearing edge, a mysterious atmosphere and a more calming presence. The weather is ever changing in comparison to the constant heat of Portugal, they needed something to steady them, to keep their feet loosely planted to the ground. As often is the case, Cornwall provided this environment, an environment for evolution and pioneering. Both artists took full advantage of this and used their obsession to create stunning works culminating in a career defining series of paintings. For the two artists to be contemporaneous with each other is an act of fate. An act of Cornwall. Watching new techniques and intuitive observations reveal themselves over the months was like watching a battle unfurl. The two fight side by side, with each new painting, each new technique an everlasting battle with an everlasting compatriot.
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38 Everlasting: Ben Reader and Emma Rose Kennedy
Emma Rose-Kennedy: Hello me handsome! Ben Reader: Hello my lovely! How are you? EK: All the better now that I’m seeing you of course. I’ve been painting a Fairy on a belly today. BR: Very nice! I’ve been painting a masterbating goblin! EK: Ah, the usual! Haha BR: Exactly! Ok. Enough of these pleasantries. Tell me exactly what your first memory of art was, and make sure it’s goodun! EK: I think my first real heavy memory of art was when I was about seven and my family took me to a Tate retrospective of Dali. I remember that I hadn’t properly seen paintings up close before and seeing these were so incredibly detailed and luxurious. I remember wanting to touch them and that it seemed impossible that this was made. I couldn’t really understand it but I knew that it was something that I wanted to do. I just wanted to understand it and I thought the best way to understand it was to learn it myself. You? BR: I think my first memory was when I was around three years old. My parents were worried about me because I wasn’t speaking english and so they took me to a specialist. When I was there they gave me a load of cards with pictures on them and they asked me what the pictures were. I managed to tell them in perfect english: things like an apple, dog, house etc. The last card was a baboon and when they showed me it, instead of saying baboon, I told them that was my dad! I think that was my first experience
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of art haha. Those were the early days. When drawings and paintings were just symbols for something else, for whatever you want to make out of it. Then as things moved on you get into painting right? EK: Yeah, I didn’t start painting until I was relatively old, I did a lot of drawing when I was younger. But once I started painting I realised just how hard it was, but that kind of motivated me. When I realised how miserable it could be, it just made me want to carry on! No, but it is also the most divine pleasureI love the eternal tug of war between ecstasy and misery. At the moment I’m painting on aluminium, which I really enjoy. It’s a different battle to when I used to paint on wood, which was a bit more forgiving. I’ve never really got into canvas, just because it is a bit too rough. Whereas, with aluminium, every single brush stroke is seen you have to be so careful and that’s what I appreciate. BR: Yeah, I’ve recently moved from canvas to experimenting a bit with wood as well. It does depend on the size of the painting though. I like a bit of the cheeky gold leaf as well, it’s a bit of luster. A bit of gleam. A bit of treasure. EK: I love a little bit of luxury in a painting- getting in some luscious
What can we do as painters that you can’t do in any other practice? That’s where I got in to blurring the reality, you can introduce flying vegetables or whatever you want
textures and over the top ornateness... a little baroque. I’m currently working on one of a friend called Cornelius and his luxurious cloak. Typically I work from references for some things, but what my mind comes up with to weave them together can get pretty over the top and bizarre.
what can we do as painters that you can’t do in any other practice? That’s where I got in to blurring the reality, you can introduce flying vegetables or whatever you want - you can start to create absolutely anything you desire.
Ex-voto by Ben Reader
EK: Yeah, and I think it always makes it more real when you paint it, it becomes BR: Yeah, I’m pretty into drawing from a real memory or a real dream. a real life reference sometimes, there was a point where I was absolutely obsessed BR: I agree, I think it’s also something to with painting portraits and capturing do with the fact that a lot of artists do it something from the live model in front as a sort of therapy, we use it to process of me. There was one point though, things. That’s what I find whenever I’m when I realised and asked the question: doing a self portrait, I’m not doing it for
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Genius of the meadow spring by Ben Reader
Everlasting: Ben Reader and Emma Rose Kennedy 41
the public, I’m doing it for myself - to work through things and take control. I always feel much better after working on a self portrait, it’s an easy way to disperse any gremlins.
If I don’t paint, I get so angry, I truly start to lose contact with reality and myself
EK: Absolutely, it’s an obsession for me, something that I couldn’t live without. If I don’t paint, I get so angry, I truly start to lose contact with reality and myself. It’s so essential. It’s like the need to go outside, I have to take a walk every day, but obviously that’s made a lot easier considering where we’re living at the moment. BR: Yeah, it’s crazy nice down here, I know we actually returned, like a lot of people, during lockdown. I feel like so many people went ‘home’ during lockdown and I’m so thankful this is where I’m from. We’ve got all the beautiful mythology, the stories and of course the people. The artists build on each other now, in the sense that they work together to bring each other and our art up. EK: Yeah, I totally agree. Before I came to Cornwall and Penzance, I had no idea what it looked like. The only reference I had was your paintings that you produced. That’s really what drew me in. They don’t really show the coast or the seascapes or the rugged and beautiful landscapes, I get that is part of the appeal. But for me, it was the portraits you painted - that’s what appealed and intrigued me. It’s the naughtiness, the wicked and the comedic that is captured. BR: It’s also just steeped with history down in Cornwall, there are so many stories that were created here which, for me, leads to new stories being easily uncovered. The other day, when I was at the pub, I was looking into a bit of history about it whilst there. It was built
Genius of the meadow spring by Ben Reader
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42 Everlasting: Ben Reader and Emma Rose Kennedy
around 1233, during the crusades and later on there were a lot of smugglers and smugglers’ passages. The pub in question also had a few priest holes in the attic, I quite liked that because little John was hiding all the Catholics down here. But these secrets, these stories just breeds curiosity and when there is curiosity there is mischief and when there is mischief, for me, there is art. EK: Exactly, it’s a rabbit warren of secret allies, hiding spots and curious characters. That’s what we investigate and transfer it onto the canvas. That’s how I often start with my paintings. BR: I’m curious about your process when it comes to creating a painting, how do you go about it?
These secrets, these stories just breeds curiosity and when there is curiosity there is mischief and when there is mischief, for me, there is art BEYOND THE RING AND THIMBLE
EK: I usually begin by someone posing for me, or I take photos of them. After that I usually do some drawings. They don’t usually end up being used, but ones where I take the figure from. Afterwards, I’ll start painting the figure itself and try to puzzle together what is happening in the painting. I used to do drawings where I would know exactly what is happening in the painting, before I even started painting. It was so boring, especially as I am such a slow painter. Now I piece the painting together piece by piece as I go and the story unfolds to me as it appears on the canvas. I’m telling myself the story as I paint it and going on this epic journey. When it’s done it’s a complete surprise! It’s so fun. How about you? BR: Similar to you. For me, a lot of it comes down to research. I’ll spend a lot of time reading, gathering photos, flowers if I’m painting flowers, clothes if I’m painting clothes and so on. For example, a recent painting: The Genius of the Meadow Spring, the research was split between the May Queen, Blodeu-
Forest of the thin by Emma Kennedy
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Everlasting: Ben Reader and Emma Rose Kennedy 45
wedd, the wife of Lleu Llaw Gyffes in Welsh mythology who was made of flowers and a film called Midsommar. By the way, Midsommar was horrendous but just stuck in my head because of the pallet! Those three are my main influences for this particular painting. I will then go about gathering flowers, taking pictures of it and composing them with the best looking colour matches. But when I really got the kick for this painting was when I was getting a friend to model for it, I got a yellow sack that I shone light on to which bounced off her face. Her face ended up reflecting this glorious golden light and I knew that was when I was finished.
I noticed when it came to our paintings, although they are very different and we paint at different speeds, one thing that’s common is our obsessive research
EK: The bounce is bountiful! One thing I noticed when it came to our paintings, although they are very different and we paint at different speeds, one thing that’s common is our obsessive research. We’re constantly reading and constantly experimenting. A recent painting of mine included faeries and I spent days researching the fae and their tales. I got really into Victorian fairy tales as well - I spent weeks down that rabbit hole! BR: I know exactly what you mean, and it’s worth saying that the painting is sometimes not what you see, it’s the conversation that came before that, the research and the learning that builds on the painting. You bring those ideas to life. Ideas that never had a life before. Words that never had pictures.
@emmarosekennedy @readerben www.benreaderart.com
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N JACK Maybe the echoes have changed 47
Selected poems from 'Maybe the echoes have changed' a larger collection of poetry by Jack Watson
Jack Watson is odd. He slipped a selection of poems under my door at some time in the evening without saying a word. Sketches came the next day and a receipt from Tesco with notes on it the third. The poems were often stained and typed on what was clearly an old and broken typewriter. I also recently discovered that he works under several pseudonyms. This intrigue can often be dismissed under the guise of pretentiousness but spend some time with the sketches, his paintings and his poems and you'll begin to understand the complexities plaguing a truly talented young man coming to terms with his reality. Watson's work is an attempt to suppress the depressive nature of being human, and the continual social awk-
wardness in a society based upon ideas that have manifested themselves over time. The ideas that one should lead a specific life to please or to prosper in what is seen as the ‘normal path’ or the ‘right’ one. By distilling both tragedy and humour at the same time into a painting, drawing or poem Watson creates multiple angles for the audience to interpret. Watson isn't trying to find something beyond the everyday, instead he is hoping to find clarity within one’s existence. Within that one moment in time.
@jackwatsonart www.jackwatsonpainter.co.uk
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I dont feel the Knife
xixknow k idxlx; xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx A man in a long coat doesnt feel much pain
Wind chilled d wet with a sour brain straight out of honey and sugar state W Negronis by the apple trees The chats like dried fruit XXXXX fruit
Reduced gone off eggs Bore the legs ofxxx I and my friends Soot filled lungs on these nights Liver and xxxx rats and rubbish bags kicking over bins trying hard cahught xxxxxxx to get in or back to the good ones Those fucking good ones wherever they've been
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The Spy xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Melting on a pot sands Left out on a desert as an ice creamx creamm To melt like bathers skin in their old age crack with lines of regret Wahsed in the crack houses petrol poured over you Beaten with a memory stick kept under floorboards Flailing like a leaf in the siberian winds that catch your cheeks A crash in your mind , body xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Nestled under a rocxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx rock about to fall on you and you loved trapped between chance and folly Cant think which way is up Stuck on mars , without a tour guide , compass or sex drive what lurks kills This is your first interview as thecxxxxx the clerk spy
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lovers are like cats and dogs in the alley dung beetle wardare and explosions on the waterways whirling shaking maggots bit the girls egg xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx they are radiant glimpses of hope when there is only w whet x sdeways sorrow dragonflys meeting in teacups gowing mold jokers on cards in decks with human blood shed , skin is found on backs with sweat sheets torn faces swollen where cattle drink from worlds lost promise in the sand with cracks XXXmain drag is filled with new reporters the xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxgxxxxxkxxxxxixxxxhxxxxkkxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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The Old man and the cops
I know nothing of the sort This is what I tell them Im only human
This is also not a piece of evience I was looking for a rabbit to shoot where were you?
I do not of anything you talk about After lunch I left my hotel and took a long walk up to the hills
Last chance smart alec Indeed it was , it was one of those classic hot summer days So I had to change
You went where? I was drinking with a couple of pals Then what ? You of ought to have been there , the band were from out of town
and they played the house down xxx We need something more? .... Im trying to figure out the route home okay........ the grass on the right lake on the left I stumbled the long roads back to my place What did they look like? There were wolves and hyenas and coyotes all around d cornered xxxxxxx I was worrie Did you see the old man in passing or not? friend and we go for a smoke I whisper to a griend This is no help , where were yoy you on the night it happened and did you see the old man ?? I was drunk , and I am always drunk He doesnt exist and neither do I BEYOND THE RING AND THIMBLE
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Chicken Soup
Frustration is like boiling a chicken in a pot
Whilst his brothers and sisters watxh watch him boil
The fat allx alll dripping , the feathers dead memories The wcreaming screaming bird who bathes in his own torture without a choice , like us We bathe in hell without a voice soup All of us , we are all like Chicken suop
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Documenting the lives of the Maeckelberghes There was a time when the name Maeckelberghe was synonymous with Penzance and Cornwall. Margo Maeckelberghe, an artist and Cornish Bard, was a proactive member of the Cornish community. She held membership with the Newlyn Society of Artists, was Chair of the Penwith Society, and was elected a Bard of the Cornish Gorsedd. Margo’s husband, Willy Maeckelberghe, worked as a doctor, running a practice in Penzance from the 1960s through to the 90s, played with passion for his local rugby club, and zealously captured daily life in Cornwall as an amateur photographer. The Maeckelberghes spent a lifetime entrenching themselves in and building up their community and their legacy has become as much of a part of the Cornish landscape as the dramatic coastlines, endless moors, and deep blue pools of sea and sky that Margo passionately sought to capture in her paintings. Sadly, Willy passed away in 2007 and Margo in 2014. They are survived by their two children: Paul, a music producer and Nico, a nurse who are both now retired. What they also left behind was a trove of pictures, slides, paintings and memories. The documents were found by the family after the passing of Margo and Willy and the dissolving of their family home. Michael Eddy and Rory Blair, two local Social Documentary Photographers, got in touch with the family in hopes of shedding light on this unseen material and… The Maeckelberghe Archive was born. TEXT: CHARLIE MCQUAID
ARCHIVISTS: MICHAEL EDDY AND RORY BLAIR
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The Maeckelberghe Archive gives an intimate look behind the canvas of Margo and behind the lens of Willy. Collaborating together, Michael Eddy and Rory Blair are working to exhibit Margo’s original artworks along with Willy’s beautifully documented photographs. The project explores the nature of the archive, and ponders the role of photography and the archive in the formation of memories. It documents the extraordinary lives of Margo and Willy Maeckelberghe, featuring Margo’s works as an expressive Cornish landscape painter and the family’s travels around the world as seen by Willy. It questions what we are able to infer about a person or persons based on the images they make of their family, likely intended solely for themselves diaristically or with the occasional visitor when the slide machine was brought out. Margo is remembered for her expressive renditions of the picturesque Cornish landscapes that utilise brooding colours and dynamic compositions to depict the county’s coastlines and rolling moorlands. In capturing the drama of the Penwith peninsula her work provided a response to artistic challenges faced by the generation of artists who grew up in the wake of the pioneering modernist figures associated with postwar St Ives and Newlyn. Maeckelberghe found her
voice by emphasising her rootedness in the landscape of west Penwith, its weather, its colour, its forms and spaces. Her works show a deep rootedness in Cornwall, and living in West Penwith gave her paintings a living, breathing understanding of the place. There is something almost unsettling about her paintings - the desolate, expansive and often overwhelming swathes of lands, seas and beaches that seem unable to be contained by the edge of the canvas. They have a forceful and epic quality that manifests in both her choice of subject and their executions, a quality that, at times, approaches the sublime. She drew her inspiration from the starkness of the moors, particularly around the Carn, near Zennor, where one can find some of the most ancient geological rock formations in the British Isles. Margo’s husband, Willy, was not native to Cornwall but arrived in the United Kingdom during World War Two after his country of birth, Begium, was invaded by Germany. Aged just 12 and with minimal possessions, Willy and his parents undertook the 600 mile journey while a continent was at war. A small fishing boat was the transport of choice to get the family from Ostend to London and relative safety. Willy and his family were now among thousands of refugees that were displaced during the war,
he quickly learned English by reading Charles Dickens and studied medicine at St Thomas’s hospital. His passion for rugby brought him down to Penzance where he met and married Margo. In South Parade, Penzance, he worked as a doctor and ran a practice from the 1960s through to the 90s. In his spare time, he played for the local rugby club and captured the family’s travels around the world in the beautiful slides preserved in the archive. It’s here in his photographic eye we are able to see the intimacies of a family growing together. Willy’s artistic side is at odds with his medical practise, the result is a rendering of their adventures from the 1950s through to the 1990s in vivid and intimate detail. This on-going archival project was launched in celebration of such a unique and creative family who owned a now renowned studio upon Zennor Carne. The beautiful studio-cottage on the ridge of the moors between Penzance and Zennor was the actual and inspirational centre of Margo’s vision, and doubled as the perfect place to raise their children, Nico and Paul. Simply put, Michael’s and Rory’s curatorial edits combined with Margo’s original paintings might just do justice to the unique lives and works of the Maeckelberghes. Enjoy. @the.maeckelberghe.archive @rory_blair www.roryblair.photography
The Maeckelberghe Archive gives an intimate look behind the canvas of Margo and behind the lens of Willy BEYOND THE RING AND THIMBLE
@_michaeleddy_ www.michael-eddy.com
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68 Show previews
Outside the Algorithm The Exchange, 24 July - 9 October 2021 Following a year in which we have all become more reliant on digital technologies than we could ever previously have imagined, Outside The Algorithm investigates digital culture, questioning our position as online observers and dares to ask what has this accelerated reliance on technology done for our mental health? The exhibition, at The Exchange in Penzance, offers a stimulating space for interaction and reflection, with a range of media and artworks including interactive projections, a controversial electric-acoustic radio album, experimental film from international female artists, creative coding and meditative GIFs. Artists and works featured include Damjanski, a contemporary Yugoslavian artist living in a browser, and his experimental software called bye bye camera, an app that seeks to remove any human presence from cityscapes with a taste of the uncanny valley. Sam Meech, a UK-based media artist, creates playful interactive and constantly changing projections. Video Culture, which uses audio, visual feedback, and projection mapping, won the ALIFE Inspired Art Award 2020. Award-winning interdisciplinary artist Rhiannon Armstrong presents, The Slow GIF Movement.
Rhiannon brings hers and other people’s lived experience of neurodivergence to an understanding of how GIF culture is currently increasing the hostility of online space, and seeks to rectify that with the creation of calming, gently looping GIFs of her own and others’ creation. Chez Conversations, an all-female New York collective, present The Age of Misinformation; a short film that questions the reality of our personal connections through technology. Cyber feminist Laurence Rassel and trans-activist Terre Thaemlitz present an excerpt from their electro-acoustic radio drama album (with spoken word), which examines gender politics and features Peggy Phelan, the American feminist scholar. The cutting-edge work was deemed so controversial that German Public Radio banned it from broadcast. Martin Vargic, Slovakian author and artist is best known for his Map of the Internet 2.0 (2014) and Map of the Internet 2021. The map is divided between software companies, gaming companies and some of the more real-life oriented websites. Peter Freeman, an international lighting artist based in West Cornwall creates light sculptures and light installations using neon and LEDs, including the epic illuminated glass façade of The Exchange. www.newlynartgallery.co.uk newlynexchange
The Best of Both Worlds The Byre Gallery, 24th July - 11th September 2021 Summer continues at the Byre Gallery in Millbrook with The Best of Both Worlds - an exhibition rich in both contemporary art - and contemporary craft from Cornwall and beyond. Three Cornish based artists: Alex Yarlett, Nicola Mosley and Tara Leaver are showing collections of their beautiful sea inspired paintings; and Cornwall jewellers, Lucy Spink, Claire Stockings-Baker and Carin Lindberg also feature in the exhibition with their elegant and timeless work. From further afield, visitors to the exhibition can enjoy work that can’t be seen in any other galleries in the south west: based in the Highlands of Scotland, Michele Bianco’s hand-carved ceramic vessels and structural works are elegant additions
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to any home and have deservedly won a growing number of fans; London based ceramicist Loraine Rutt trained and worked as a cartographer before and going to art college to study ceramics. It was there that she began to consider that her two passions might come together - the result is a range of tiny porcelain globes at a scale of 1:170 000 000, that can also be mounted and rotated in little oak cases - heirlooms of the future; and with kiln formed and pâte de verre glass from Verity Pulford from North Wales and blown glass from Venice based Benjamin Lintell, The Best of Both Worlds has something to suit all tastes - from near and far. www.thebyregallery.co.uk thebyregallery
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Viral Energy Still – ‘Viral Energy Game’ by Keiken Portals final – ‘Chroma Culture’ by Sam Meech
Ceramic globes by Loraine Rutt
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70 Show reviews
Safe as Milk Arusha Gallery, 19th - 21st July 2021 After a successful Edinburgh edition, Arusha Gallery presents Safe as Milk London, an in person show of work by artists commenting on the habitual relationship with hyper capitalism and food culture. The exhibition does well to open a conversation about and highlight the carnivalesque and momentous nature of food today, which has become a complex daily challenge. Food consumption, already conditioned in us by upbringing, schooling, inherited and experienced traumas, religious rites and moral inclinations, is increasingly present in the visual realm via Instagram and other social media platforms. Visual recipes and photographs of food from film, literature, advertising, gourmet magazines, news reports and public health literature seen often through the glossy lights of our screens become pseudo-por-
nographic thirst traps for our senses which we further intellectualise to set rules of conduct for our psyche and body. Tensions occur within our relationship with food, as we negotiate the messages around food perpetuated in our current age. Restrictive eating exists in a direct clash with living in a late capitalistic, hyper-consumerist society, constantly being encouraged to over-indulge, over-buy and gorge. A duality is born, creating unparalleled difficulties surrounding food and health. This dichotomy is creating a completely unmanageable attitude towards food and mindful consumption, which is infinitely interesting to dissect within art as Food reveals itself as a taboo, being both pleasurable and shameful at once.
@badartpresents @arushagallery
Georgia Stephenson Patio Project (June — September 2020) Screening Sculptures (June — September 2021) Sculpture, best suited to the privilege of physical proximity, has suffered tremendously at the hands of our now year-long shift to digital spectatorship. Lockdown saw the audience for three-dimensional practices dangerously dwindle, as viewing art became tied to the screen and Instagram gave rise to the ultimate 2D echo-chamber. Independent curator Georgia Stephenson recognized early in the pandemic the need to represent and support three-dimensional practices, particularly those of emerging artists. She launched the Patio Project in June 2020 to give a much needed lifeline to sculpture proposals jettisoned by degree show closures. In the back garden of her South East London flat, Georgia created a modest but innovative sanctuary for new sculpture, offering a stage for three-dimensional works to quietly shine on a bespoke “patio plinth.” The project was supported by the Freelands Foundation Emergency Fund and eight selected artists from a UK-wide open call were given a small grant and technical help to realize their proposal. Each piece was installed for a week at the curator’s home, open to bookable
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appointments. In the end, the project showcased some exceptional and diverse work from across the country, with highlights including a decorative exploration of Chinoiserie furniture by Hannah Lim (Edinburgh College of Art), a mystical faux wishing-well by Eleanor Mclean (UCA Farnham) and a frustrated gothic steel flower vase by Jordi Clotet (Chelsea College of Art). This June Georgia returned to present Screening Sculptures, a similarly poised project, this time teaming up with Ladies Drawing Club — a small independent project based in St-Petersburg, Russia. An open call for female-identifying artists across the UK brought together a fantastic mix of emerging artists each finding new ways to translate their sculpture practices to the digital realm. The landscape-driven motifs of Fanny Gicquel and Emily Stapleton Jefferies particularly stand out, both sublimating a yearning for the outside into a palpable sense of unknown exteriority. The project is now live on the Ladies Drawing Club website. www.ladiesdrawingclub.com www.stephensongeorgia.com
@thebyregallery
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By and bye by Nettle Grellier
Don’t be funny by Nettle Grellier Fanny Gicquel — The immensity with you (2020) for Screening Sculptures, online; curated by Georgia Stephenson with Ladies Drawing Club
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72 More reviews
Allan Gardner Future Of Nothing Genuine arts criticism is seldom found cheek by jowl with glossy adverts for Issey Miyake and Yves Saint Lauren (writes Charlie Mills). As more and more art magazines are bought up and turned into counter top PR machines for over-priced global brands, one’s safest bet to find true criticism is in hunting out the lo-fi inkjet prints of DIY publishing houses and artist fanzines. With this in mind, Allan Gardner’s Future of Nothing series is the perfect case in point. Gardner began the project with the intent to produce a monthly piece of original arts criticism in zine form for all of 2021. Kicking off in January with “Sex and Guilt and John Duncan,” Gardner meticulously unpacks Duncan’s mid-70s LA performances. Brutally existential and confrontational, they ranged from firing blank-loaded pistols at unwitting participants to sexually stimulating unsuspecting passengers on a city bus with a liquid poured into the ventilation system (aiming
to mimic the smell of vaginal secretions during orgasm). Gardner’s short essay and interview with Duncan are telling of his consistent writing style: always inquisitive, accessible and compelling. Gardner takes no shortcuts through established rhetorics and never relies on the humdrum platitudes of generic arts criticism. He has since covered subjects including the body-horror classic, VIDEODROME (1983); the semiotics of authenticity in the late rapper Lil Peep; Gregg Araki's 1995 film, The Doom Generation; and a critical analysis of Mark Fisher’s now-infamous term, “The Slow Cancellation of the Future”. Each of these editions come fitted with a high-res centrefold print for the minimal fee of £6.66, available only online through his Big Cartel, FUTURE OF NOTHING. Be quick though, Gardner’s project is already in high demand and the small-run prints sell out fast. Sign up and set your notifications to loud… www.allangardner.co.uk
Salvador Dali 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship may be the most in-depth, dogmatic, generous and amusing treatise to have been written on painting (writes Emma Rose Kennedy). The gorgeous volume is riddled with exquisite Dalí drawings, handwritten notes, charts and lists meant to guide the aspiring painter towards the riches of beauty and success. Dali begins by walking us through the history of painting and his resolute opinions on the Old Masters and Modern Art. He then ventures to numerically rank himself and his contemporaries against DaVinci, Velasquez and Vermeer in terms of color, craftsmanship, originality and genius in painting. The rest of the book is dedicated to unraveling each of his 50 secrets, ranging from bizarre and specific, such as “The secret of the periods of carnal abstinence and indulgence to be observed by the painter” and “The Secret of the form of an olive by virtue of which the painter may be guided in
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choosing the woman he must marry,” to actually quite useful, including “The secret of transferring the most immaculate tracings by means of oil paint” and “The secret of the Mars colors.” While some of his advice can be chalked up to the sheer showmanship of Dalí, much of it shares with us the fruits of a life spent obsessed with craftsmanship and dedicated to learning the forgotten secrets of the Old Masters. Painters will be delighted with his informative lists of colors and brushes, explaining their properties and best uses, as well as his recipes for homemade inventions to help with blending, measuring, and composing, while the layman may be intrigued to find out “the secret of the reason why a great draughtsman should draw while completely naked.” 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship is not to be missed, offering us the perfect blend of beautiful Dalinian ridiculousness and priceless pearls of practical painting wisdom.
@allangardnerr
More reviews 73
Allan Gardner — Power and Morality and Videodrome (2021)
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74 Artist profiles
Marianne Trewern Cornish born Marianne Trewern has been creating her ‘dress up items’ for just over a year, under the name KBV Trewern. An initial research period into Cornish history during her time at Falmouth University became a springboard for Marianne to create works which weave threads between the past and her own, current, understanding of the world. In particular the Bal Maidens have acted as a key source of inspiration. Subverting the Bonnet as a garment, Trewern
plays with ideas of BDSM, as well as taking from her Cornish heritage - dancing between modesty and exhibitionism. Trewern dabbles in other forms of media, including sculpture, and similarly to her work with KBV, the themes are often focused around ideas of the uncanny, duality and testing one’s perceptions and expectations, often with outcomes that deal with ideas of horror and beauty, but always with a playful take. www.mariannetrewern.com
Jesse Pollock Jesse Pollock studied Illustration at Camberwell College of Arts, but towards the end of his studies found himself far more inclined towards molten conduits of welded sheet-steel and slip-wheeling ceramics (writes Charlie Mills). Following his graduation in 2015, Pollock was quick to move back to his childhood home in Kent to pursue an increasing interest in wrought sculpture. He now lives in the small rural village of Teynham, where his studio is filled with sculptures reflective of the vestiges of rural England: fruit-picking ladders, cider flagons, milk churns and hunting rifles. Focusing on agricultural tools and motifs, Pollock juxtaposes bucolic convention with a distorted and contested reality of the countryside, suggesting something darker, more frustrated beneath its alluring facade. Fabricated
using welded steel and silicone, they reflect a brutal reality of material hardship, discord, class division and racism, as well as the fear and uncertainty of what we have lost or stand to lose from crises affecting rural life today. His latest commission, The Granary, speaks to a need to overcome these crises, as well as the vexed rhetoric that underpins traditional visions of the nation. You can catch The Granary in London anytime until 18 September at Bold Tendencies, a repurposed brutalist car park in Peckham. Pollock will also have new work at Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer in Buckinghamshire (end 24 Oct) and at the new show Where Things Fall Down at Fels in East London (9 - 18 July). @boldtendencies @contemporarsculpwww.contemporarysculpturefulmer.com turefulmer www. boldtendencies.com
Jane Hayes Greenwood Over the past two years Greenwood’s paintings have dovetailed into a rabbit hole of mystical plants and flora, delving deep into the histories of organic fertility symbols, midwifery and medicinal botany (writes Charlie Mills). Greenwood’s work evokes the wondrous and hallucinogenic properties of the plant kingdom, with her unique and individual species appearing to the common eye as either extinct or wholly outlawed. There is a clear psychoanalytic or surrealist preoccupation in the work as there are numerous allusions to the power of the organic body, its generative properties and the convoluted desires that emerge through the proximity of aphrodisia and maternity. Despite their beauty, these plants explore a series of
foreclosed histories; methods of cultivating, healing and being in the world that were purposefully suppressed by the rise of global capitalism. In the words of Federici, “It became a matter of exterminating or confiscating a certain ecology of body and soul, hallucinogenic treatments, and forms of pleasure or excitation.” Greenwood’s work is a testament to the revelatory powers of this suppressed ecology of entheogenic practices, exploring how desire, control and magical thinking manifest in our contemporary relationship to the natural world. Recent solo shows include The Witch’s Garden at GiG, Munich, and Lead Me Not Into Temptation at Block 336, London, of which Greenwood is also a founding Director. www.janehayesgreenwood.com
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@kbv.trewern
@janehayesgr
Artist profiles 75
Jesse Pollock — The Granary (2021) at Bold Tendencies: Arcadia, London.
Jane Hayes Greenwood — The Go-Between (2020)
KBV item: Bunny Boy Bonnet S/M
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76 Ones to watch
Jessica Slater Full of movement and beautiful mark making, Jessica Slater’s paintings employ a combination of painting and collage to create large, puzzle-like compositions. Earth tones ground her work, while rapid, wing-like strokes suggest flight and movement, offering the viewer witness to a brilliant dance between earth and sky, stillness and motion. @jessicaslaterart
Kerry Harding Filled with magically subtle tonal changes and infinitely inventive ways of paint application, Kerry Harding’s small landscapes enter the realm of the alchemical, leaving the viewer at a total loss of how they are made. Her paintings pit incredibly rendered areas of sea and sky against large swaths of land made of simple washes of colour, in a balancing act that touches upon the sublime. @kerryharding_art
Alasdair Lindsay Alasdair Lindsay’s sun-drenched palette and geometric, aerial compositions smack closely to Richard Diebenkorn’s Californian landscapes, but his unique method of paint application and Cornish focus mark them boldly as his own. Alasdair’s surfaces are hyper-smooth, with brushstrokes only visible when he uses fast, thin, accurate strokes to capture the fluffy grass of Cornish moors. Clear, gem coloured seas and desolate, unpeopled stretches of beach make one want to dive into Alasdair’s paintings and stay for the summer. @alasdairlindsayart
Fergus Polglase Fergus Polgase’s wildly laboured-over and built up surfaces tell a tale before one even clocks what lay upon them. From bottom to top, Fergus’s painted and multimedia works are bold storytellersshouting by acrid colour, punctuated by deep pools of black, and mystifying with piskie-like figures and invented creatures strolling about. @ferguspolglase
Zenna Tagney Zenna Tagney is a Cornish artist, working mainly in figurative ceramic and mixed-media sculpture, and often incorporating materials gathered directly from the Cornish landscape. Her work draws inspiration from her upbringing in the world of traditional Cornish music and culture, and depicts characters from local stories, folklore, and traditions. Zenna is particularly interested in how these tales and traditions are embedded in the landscape and has been exploring this relationship in the specific context of her home area of Clay Country. Investigating how shifting landscape and industry has affected the folklore of the area. @zennatagney
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James Meredew James is a photographer from Falmouth, Cornwall working primarily with black and white film. A variety of printing and experimental techniques are often used in his work with the subjects deeply rooted in place and home. James started Ancient Magic Editions early in 2020 as a means to publish his own work and his friends. @jamesmeredew Danying Yu Danying Yu is a wanderer. Wandering in unfamiliar surroundings, observing various language of the city in its sights, sounds, smells, in the way it materializes (and has been materializing) against one’s body. Her current works attempt to collect data on the field and transform them into puzzle pieces to document her brief but intense urban forays through self-imaging practice. @im_danying
Ones to watch 77
Kerry Harding
Jessica Slater
Zenna Tagney
James Meredew
Alasdair Lindsay
Fergus Polglase
Danying Yu
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PZ Gallery is an iconic building located in a wonderful location in the heart of Penzance, Cornwall. It is in very close proximity to two more stunning architectural builds - Jubilee Pool and The Yacht Inn. Forming a trio of delightful buildings. It is a 1938 Art Deco building which is a space for both locals, and visitors to enjoy and exhibit art. The building is not currently listed, therefore we are asking people to sign a petition in order to protect it. By signing the petition you support the protection of this historic building, through a listing on the National Heritage List for England (NHLE). We believe this community space should be protected for local artists, to avoid the demolition/ destruction of it. Please support us by signing! Please head to our Facebook page or website to find and sign the petition. pzgallery.co.uk facebook.com/PZGallery
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