Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, nature, photo, photograph, postaday, shadows on September 18, 2016| 5 Comments »
I’m starting to notice that my photos (all taken on my mobile phone) have recurrent themes. Today’s nine pictures reflect a few of those interests: words on signs, shadows, plants, nature, art. Either I’m in a rut, or I’m going to get really good at a few themes.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, Beckmann’s “Dutch Landscape with Bathers, Bob Kierlin, Gauguin’s Still Life with Onions, Heade’s The Great Florida Sunset and View From Fern-Tree Walk, Heidelberg With a Rainbow, Judith H. Dobrzynski, Mary Burritcher, Minnesota Marine Art Museum, postaday, real clear arts, Turner, winona on September 15, 2016| 2 Comments »
Because I lived there for a few years, I can never resist a story about Minnesota, land of 10,000 surprises. Here’s one story from a Wall Street Journal reporter.
“Winona, MN, is home to just 27,500 people,” writes at Real Clear Arts, a blog at ArtsJournal, “but it has an art museum worthy of a much bigger city.
“The Minnesota Marine Art Museum … was the brainchild of a local collecting couple named Bob Kierlin and Mary Burritcher. They knew nothing about art when they started collecting …
“But today they, with the help of others, have created something very worthy. For them, marine art includes any work with enough water to ‘float a boat.’ And so the museum – which has beautiful, spacious galleries, is filled with works by many great artists.
“It has been expanded twice, and most of it is filled with works on loan from the couple. They include Turner’s 1841 watercolor Heidelberg With a Rainbow, Gauguin’s Still Life with Onions, Heade’s The Great Florida Sunset and View From Fern-Tree Walk, Jamaica, Beckmann’s “Dutch Landscape with Bathers” plus paintings by Monet, van Gogh, Picasso, O’Keeffe, Hartley, Cole, Bierstadt and Homer.”
Read more here. Just scroll down.
Photo:
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged adult, adult themes, art, beatrix potter, children, Christian Blauvelt, grownup, literature, peter rabbit, postaday, vocabulary on September 7, 2016| 10 Comments »
I confess that although I can see why children adore books by certain illustrators, sometimes I don’t like reading the artists’ words.
Richard Scarry, for example, with his delightful animals and five-seater pencil cars, writes text that can get boring pretty fast. And Beatrix Potter, whom I admire for a multitude of reasons, employs very big words and potentially scary themes.
Christian Blauvelt recently covered that angle at the BBC. He begins with Potter’s first line in a storybook.
“ ‘Your father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs McGregor.’
“Old Mrs Rabbit’s frightful warning to her children Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail and Peter appears on the opening page of Beatrix Potter’s first book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Aside from featuring perhaps the most dramatic use of a semicolon in children’s literature, it sets the tone for her work from the start: that horrors abound in a world of Darwinian struggle, but that these must be faced calmly.
“Your parents, and perhaps your children, may be devoured by a vengeful property owner, or sold for tobacco; you may have your tail ripped off by an angry owl; an invading rat might tie you up in string and include you as the key ingredient in a pudding. But life goes on – disappointments must be faced and tragedies overcome. …
“Potter’s tales have been consistently popular with adults, as well as children, since The Tale of Peter Rabbit was published in 1902 when she was 36 years old. This is not just because they feature adorable creatures in harrowing situations; her talking-animal stories also comment on the era’s class politics, gender roles, economics and domestic life.
“Did she examine British society through animals because she spent more time with animals than children, aside from her brother Bertram, when she was young? Because she wanted to rebel against the bourgeois values and morals of her wealthy middle class family – which had made its money in the textile industry – but only dared do so through furry surrogates? Because she could only publish children’s stories since her true passion, science, was a career field closed to women in the late 19th Century? Because she had a German tutor who introduced her to the back-to-nature ethos of the Romantics?” More.
Hmm. Maybe I’m being too anti-intellectual here, but I’d say Beatrix Potter just got a kick out of telling stories like that.
And maybe she was right that small children could handle the scary parts. My three-year-old grand-daughter for example, has always loved Peter Rabbit and could recite the fancy phrases by heart when she was only two. Reciting fancy phrases is great for language development.
Photo of Beatrix Potter’s art: Penguin
Beatrix Potter, an amateur scientist, was meticulous about representing nature accurately, even if the animals did wear clothes. Here Peter Rabbit gorges on Mr. McGregor’s carrots.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Aram Moshayedi, art, artist, brazil, carolina miranda, hammer museum, Hamza Walker, japan, junk art, Kenzi Shiokava, made in LA, postaday, sculptor, Wally Skalij, wood sculptures on August 31, 2016| 2 Comments »
Photo: Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times
So, actually, he was an artist first and only did gardening to support himself as immigrant with no connections.
Los Angeles Times reporter Carolina A. Miranda wrote about him in July, around the time of the “Made in L.A.” biennial at the Hammer Museum.
She says, “When artist Kenzi Shiokava received a telephone call from a pair of curators organizing [the biennial], he says he had little clue of the meteoric effect it would have on his life.
“ ‘I’d never seen “Made in L.A.,” ‘ says the 78-year-old sculptor. ‘I’ve always been off the art establishment.’
“But as he does with anyone who is interested in seeing his work, he invited the curators — Hamza Walker and Aram Moshayedi — to his studio so that they could have a look at his totemic wood sculptures, junk-art assemblages and curiosity boxes featuring orderly, patterned displays of old toys, plastic fruit and discarded religious ephemera.
“Shiokava says he was buoyed by the visit but subdued in his expectations. ‘Lots of shows come and go,’ he says. …
” ‘I didn’t know it’d be like this,’ he says with a resplendent grin. ‘The response has been amazing.’…
“[Walker] says that from the moment he and Moshayedi stepped into Shiokava’s studio, early in 2015, they were sure that this was an artist they wanted to include in the show.
“ ‘It was pretty immediate,’ he says. ‘We were both speechless within 10 paces of the entrance. There were all of these totems right up front and we were like, woooowwww.’ …
“ ‘What’s always kept me going is people coming to my studio and enjoying the work,’ [Shiokava] says in his deeply accented English. ‘But now I know my work will have a legacy. My work will live.’ ”
Read about the artist’s early life as a Japanese immigrant in Brazil, how he ended up in LA, and how he began to develop his art while working as a gardener for Marlon Brando and others (here).
Photo: Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times
Kenzi Shiokava in his studio.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 13 forest, arlington, art, art gallery, artist, chance, demonstration, Jaworski-Stranc, linoleum print, Picasso, postaday, print, printmaking, random, reduce, reduction, suicide print on August 19, 2016| 6 Comments »
Art: Susan Jaworski-Stranc
Neighbors
I’m on the email list of 13 Forest Gallery in Arlington, Mass. The first time I went there, the owner enlivened his art opening with guest opera singers.
This time, he had a printmaker demonstrate a type of linoleum printing that Picasso dubbed “suicide” printmaking. Others use the word “reduction” instead of “suicide.”
When I tell you how the work is done, you will understand why Picasso felt as he did.
Instead of carving, say, four different blocks for a four-color print, the artist uses only one block. A mistake at one stage can end the whole project.
Lowell resident Susan Jaworski-Stranc has been doing reduction linoleum printmaking for more than 30 years. As the website for 13 Forest explains, “with each layer, you carve more of the block away — so once a layer has been printed and you start carving for the next layer, there’s no going back.”
The artist herself says, “After each successive printing of a color, the surface of the block is reduced while at the same time the printing surface is built up with multi-layered colors. Born from one block of linoleum, my relief prints have the nuance and rich textural surfaces of an oil painting.
“Although Picasso coined this method of working a ‘suicide print,’ I rather think of this printmaking process as emulating the journey of life. While creating my prints, I am never able to re-visit past stages. I can only proceed forward with the acceptance of all good and not so good choices which were mediated and acted upon with the hope and joy of completion.”
On August 13, the gallery was packed as Jaworski-Stranc demonstrated. Many in the audience were experienced printmakers who asked intelligent questions that showed the rest of us what sorts of issues matter to artists.
One person asked if Jaworski-Stranc knew what the picture was supposed to look like in advance, and she explained that she started with a detailed drawing. Another artist wanted to know if the colors of Jaworski-Stranc’s very first reduction print (which she showed us) were what she anticipated.
The artist laughed, holding up that print. “Are you kidding? How would I ever think up a color like this!?”
Clearly, despite all the careful planning that goes into a print, Jaworski-Stranc relishes the beauty of randomness.
More here.
Art: Susan Jaworski-Stranc
Coastal Forces at Sunset
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged african american, art, art installation, black, breaking bread, caucasian, children, concord, food, food desert, fulani haynes, garden, grow your own, haley house, healthy eating, history, landscape, massachusetts, nutrition, old manse, performance art, postaday, race, race relations, roxbury, sam durant, slaves, the meeting house, white, william emerson on August 14, 2016| 2 Comments »
I had an awfully nice lunch yesterday, and I’d like to tell you about it. It involved two nonprofits — the mostly Caucasian conservation group Trustees of Reservations and the mostly African American community-outreach enterprise called Haley House.
The trustees had a really great idea recently to do meaningful art installations on a couple of their properties and chose one next to the Old Manse in Concord. The Old Manse is most often associated with 19th Century novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, but the grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson was also a resident and saw the historic events unfold at the North Bridge on April 19, 1775.
Artist Sam Durant wanted to draw attention to the presence of slaves in the early days of Concord and launch a discussion, so he constructed a kind of big-tent meeting house, with a floor made of the kinds of materials that might have been in slave buildings.
The Trustees conferred with him on a series of “lyceums” that might bring races together at the site. They decided that at the first one, they would encourage races to break bread together and talk about food traditions.
From Haley House in Roxbury, they brought in a chef, a beautiful meal, and singer/educator/retired-nurse Fulani Haynes.
I ate a vegan burger, sweet-potato mash, very spicey collard greens and wonderful corn muffins. Also available were salad and chicken.
Haynes sang a bit and talked about the origins of Haley House, how it helps low-income people and ex-offenders and local children, teaching cooking and nutrition and gardening, among other things. She invited attendees to tell food stories from their early years, and several brave spirits stood up.
That participatory aspect of the activities helped to reduce the impression that African Americans were making entertainments for a mostly white audience (art, food, music entertainments).
I loved the whole thing and learned a lot. (For example, Grandpa Emerson had slaves living upstairs, and “the embattled farmers” who “fired the shot heard ’round the world” were able to go marching off because slaves were working the farms. I really didn’t know.)
African American artifacts are on display next door at the Old Manse. The art installation will be up until the end of October 2016.
More here.
Photos: Artist Sam Durant offers the crowd a new lens on history. The chef from Haley House keeps an eye on the African American cuisine. Fulani Haynes demonstrates how a food can become an instrument.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, boiler operator, bronx, corey kilgannon, custodian, found art, handyman, israel reyes, janitor, puerto rico, Santiago Mejia, school, school 69x on August 6, 2016| 5 Comments »
I’m so glad Cousin Claire shared this New York Times story on Facebook. It’s about a school custodian with an artistic bent whose talent is raising everyone’s spirits.
Corey Kilgannon writes writes that Israel Reyes, “senior handyman and longtime boiler operator at Public School 69X Journey Prep in the Soundview section of the Bronx,” finds the lonely summer months to be a good time “to concentrate on the colorful wall murals he has become known for painting inside the 93-year-old building. …
“For years, the 15-foot walls were faded and drab, Mr. Reyes said.
“ ‘There were no colors — it was like walking into a prison,’ recalled Mr. Reyes, who said that 12 years ago he grew tired of watching students entering the building each morning with their heads down.
“ ‘A lot of these kids come from broken homes, just like I did, and I’d see them walking in, all stressed out and looking down, because the school looked even worse than their homes,’ he said. ‘I wanted to do something to make them look up.’
“So he persuaded the principal to let him use leftover paint from other jobs in the building to start creating an educational wonderland. He worked for years, during his down time, his lunch hour and on his personal time, even late into the night.
“ ‘The kids come in now in the morning and they smile,’ Mr. Reyes said. ‘They come in and ask me, “What’s next?” and I show them what I worked on overnight.’ ” …
“Mr. Reyes, whom everyone calls Carlos, said he and his five brothers were raised by his father in the Bronx and on a farm in Puerto Rico.
“ ‘We had to make our own toys from garbage, from whatever we found,’ said Mr. Reyes, who as an adult has made sculptures out of trash-picked objects, especially the wooden legs off discarded furniture, to entertain his four children and 14 grandchildren.
“He calls it ‘table leg art,’ and has made a panorama representation of Manhattan that is on display in the school library, a cityscape with wooden legs as skyscrapers. …
“Until recently, said Mr. Reyes, a widower, his apartment was decorated in an over-the-top theme — a botanical garden with a pond, a lamppost and a park bench — recalling his Puerto Rican upbringing.
“ ‘When my son moved back home, I had to sleep on the bench,’ he said. ‘I’d tell people, “I’m not homeless, but I sleep on a park bench.” ‘ ” More.
I’ve read that no matter what kind of job you have, there should be some aspect that is yours alone, where you can express your creativity. I couldn’t agree more.
Photo: Santiago Mejia/The New York Times
Israel Reyes, at Public School 69X in the Bronx, wanted to brighten the building for students. 
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Abraham Megerdichian, art, artist, Attleboro Area Museum of Industry, craft, Isaac Feldberg, Lynn Museum, machinist, metal, museum, museum of science, New Britain Industrial Museum, new england, postaday, Robert Megerdichian on August 2, 2016| 2 Comments »
After a father’s death, the family tries to find homes for his perfect metal miniatures.
Isaac Feldberg writes at the Boston Globe, “On any gift-giving occasion in the Megerdichian household, the most exciting presents to unwrap were always both the smallest and, funnily enough, the heaviest.
“Some boxes held metal miniature re-creations — a brass violin with horse-hair strings and a latched case; an aluminum piano music box that played ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.’ Others concealed stainless-steel jewelry, intricately detailed, immaculately formed. And others still contained children’s toys, like steel tractor-trailer sets to be nudged along the wooden floors of their Cambridge home.
“ ‘They were 14 ounces of love, 1 ounce of metal,’ says Robert Megerdichian, 63, of the tiniest pieces his late father, Abraham, bestowed upon the family throughout his lengthy career as a machinist. ‘He started off with a solid block of metal, brass, aluminum, copper, or stainless steel, and he gouged away, like a sculptor would, like an artist would, to create all of these objects.’
“Megerdichian’s description of his father as an artist has recently earned official validation, with museums across New England displaying an array of Abraham’s pieces. The Attleboro Area Museum of Industry, the Lynn Museum, and Boston’s Museum of Science all currently house some of his metal miniatures. Additional museum exhibits are set to open in the fall, including at Connecticut’s New Britain Industrial Museum. For more than half a century, however, Abraham’s creations were reserved for his loved ones. …
” ‘It was important to him to make things that made the people he cared for happy,’ ” said his son.
Read about Abraham’s history here. A great example of what the intersection of love and skill can give the world.
Photo: David L. Ryan/Globe Staff
Robert Megerdichian looks over a miniature Hoover vacuum cleaner crafted by his father.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, beach, chipmunk, lichen, new shoreham, photographs, photos, postaday, providence, public art, sand, swan on June 21, 2016| 4 Comments »
I find so many more photo ops in summer than in winter, although that may mean I am not paying enough attention when it’s cold out. Surely there are great shadows everywhere.
Here are a few pictures from the last two weeks.
From New Shoreham: a field with Fresh Pond in the upper left corner, yellow lichen taking over a stone wall and trees, roses growing by a gate, children warming up in the dark sand. In Providence: a shady walk on the west side of the Providence River, a painted butterfly on the path, a swan preening, a distant view of the so-called Superman Building, public art with a muskrat fishing (?), a poster explaining the art project. In Massachusetts: shadows on a tree, a chipmunk on a lichen-covered rock.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, Óscar Sanz, Fer Francés, Jaime Colsa, Javier Arce, kate essig, Marina Vargas, mobile, mural, Okuda San Miguel, Panci Calvo, postaday, spain, street art, Suso33, truck art project on June 18, 2016| 3 Comments »
Street art is not just for stationary walls any more. According to Kate Essig at WNYC radio, some pretty amazing specimens are now on the move.
“Art in Spain got a sweet new set of wheels thanks to the Truck Art Project,” she writes. “In this collaboration between a transport company and the local art community, street art takes the form of stunning mobile murals on — you guessed it — trucks.
“The project works with popular urban artists like Javier Arce, Suso33, and Marina Vargas to take their works off the wall and put them in motion. …
“The goal of the project is to make contemporary artwork accessible to all, even if it’s just a surprise sighting at a stoplight — so those in Spain who aren’t frequent gallery go-ers can still glimpse this art on the go.” An inspiring array of truck-art photos can be seen here.
And be sure to check out the project website, which reads in part, “Truck Art Project is an original art patronage project launched by the entrepreneur and collector Jaime Colsa, and curated by Fer Francés in contemporary art and Óscar Sanz in urban art. …
“The trucks working with the project will be the gigantic backdrops for the artworks. The initiative thereby becomes a living display of the most current tendencies in the country’s painting, drawing, and urban art (although the ambitious program intends to be even more multidisciplinary, involving other art forms such as photography, music, or cinema), away from the confines of a museum and aimed at non-traditional spectators and contexts that don’t usually lend themselves to contemporary art.”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, art ramble, community arts, concord, Department of Natural Resources, environment, forest, hapgood wright town forest, nature, photo, postaday, town forest, umbrella, woodland, woods on June 6, 2016| 2 Comments »
At first I saw no art. I didn’t enter the woods where the sign was, and I thought, “Maybe I have the wrong time.”
But the Hapgood Wright Town Forest is a work of art in itself, and I was up for a walk. The hilly pine-needle paths, the pond, the sounds of bullfrogs, wind in the trees, unfamiliar bird calls — all lovely. Then bit by bit, I began noticing pieces of art, part of the 2016 Art Ramble, which can be seen in the woods until September 5. How good of artists to do this!
The Umbrella Community Arts Center explains on its website, “This collaborative project with the Concord Department of Natural Resources celebrates all the arts. Sculpture, poetry, dance, and dramatic readings encourage the intersection of art, nature, and community in a historic natural setting.
“The arts offer a doorway for exploring our relationship with nature and place. An exhibit map will guide you through the exhibit at your own pace. And our calendar of special events and activities offers numerous opportunities to engage with the artists and with nature along the trails.
“We invite you to visit often, reflect, and play. Share your experiences via writing and drawing in the journals provided along the trail. Or make your own art using natural materials in the forest.”
[Nancy, this sounds like an event you organized last year.]
Curator Ursula Ziegler says, “It’s been a rumble-tumble-fantastic-interesting road, and it has already exposed us to so many interesting-important dialogues, thoughts, and ideas. Beyond the visible part of art works in a public space, there is an equally important but less visible part, which are the conversations, networks, and structures that are created within our local community and beyond.”
I took some pictures of ceramic toadstools, a QR code I don’t know how to use that would have identified an artist, sapling-like totems (or totem-like saplings), a small sculpture of a boy attached to a tree, fluttery dragonflies and the sign I missed on entering.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, art + practice, art and practice, brandeis, caitlin julia rubin, christopher bedford, Eileen Harris Norton, giving back, hair salon, MacArthur Foundation, mark bradford, postaday, rose art museum, Sebastian Smee, venice biennale on June 3, 2016| 4 Comments »
I was reading about the community outreach of the artist chosen to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 2017. How inspiring to see a once-disadvantaged kid reach back to help others after he meets with success!
Sebastian Smee writes at the Boston Globe, “The next artist to represent America at the Venice Biennale, the world’s most prestigious contemporary art event, will be the Los Angeles-based artist Mark Bradford. And his exhibit for the US Pavilion will be presented by the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University. …
“The recipient of a 2009 ‘genius’ grant from the MacArthur Foundation, Bradford grew up in South Los Angeles. He worked for many years in his mother’s hair salon, which later became his studio. …
“Bradford, 54, is known for his tough, large-scale abstract works made from layers of paper, much of it salvaged and repurposed, and bound together with clear shellac. Using power sanders and other devices, he then works back into the surface, exposing the layers underneath. The results are some of the most beautiful, raw, and inventive works in recent art. …
“Bradford and his partner, Allan DiCastro, along with the collector Eileen Harris Norton, established a private foundation called Art + Practice, which combines an exhibition space with the provision, among other things, of job training and other forms of support for children transitioning out of foster care.”
More at the Globe. Check out Bradford, Norton and DiCastro’s nonprofit, Art + Practice, here.
Photo: Caitlin Julia Rubin
Christopher Bedford (left), director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, with artist Mark Bradford at the Rose in 2014.
.jpg)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged andy newman, art, brooklyn navy yard, Byron Smith, creative time, duke riley, fly by night, led, lights, performance art, pigeons, postaday, rita mcmahon, trained pigeons, wild bird fund, wildlife rehabilitator on May 27, 2016| 4 Comments »
Pigeon performance art in New York is ruffling a few feathers, and no wonder. The pigeons failed to sign performance agreements.
Andy Newman reports at the New York Times, “No one asked 2,000 pigeons if they wanted to have lights strapped to their legs in the name of art. Nor did anyone ask the birds how they felt about being shooed from their homes at dusk and sent flying up to illuminate the Brooklyn sky.
“But whether Duke Riley’s avian-powered performance piece ‘Fly by Night‘ constitutes pigeon abuse is a more complicated question.
“More than 5,000 people have signed a change.org petition calling for the show, which opened May 7 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, to be closed. …
“Their charges: that the birds are terrified by the flapping plastic flag Mr. Riley waves to keep them flying; that it is unnatural to make pigeons fly at night, when they normally rest; and that between their poor night vision and the distractions of the moving lights, they could become disoriented and crash into the East River. …
“Before ‘Fly by Night’ opened, [however], the nonprofit arts group that organized it, Creative Time, asked the director of the Wild Bird Fund, Rita McMahon, to inspect. The fund, based on the Upper West Side, treats more than 2,000 sick and injured pigeons a year.
“ ‘Mixing art and animals is a very risky business,’ said Ms. McMahon, who is a state-licensed wildlife rehabilitator, ‘but I was very impressed.’ The pigeons were healthy and well fed, their temporary homes beautiful and clean.
“ ‘I didn’t see any traumatized pigeons,’ she added. ‘You see them mating, courting, everything, all over the boat. I think that’s a pretty good sign.’
“ ‘Fly by Night’ runs on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays until June 12, and the protesters say they will be out every night for the rest of the run.”
More here.
Photo: Byron Smith for The New York Times
Duke Riley’s “Fly by Night” performance piece features more than 2,000 trained pigeons with LEDs attached to their legs. 
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged appleknocker, art, canal street, concord river, fairy garden, photo, photograph, picture, postaday, providence, rope, seekonk, swan, toadstool, tulip, Woonasquatucket River on May 18, 2016| 2 Comments »
So, what do we have here? Mysterious pillars supporting a gazebo roof on Canal St., Providence. Toadstools. Tulips. Branch over the Concord River. Boots for sale. Two Seekonk River scenes, one with swans. Nautical rope design on railing along Woonasquatucket River in downtown Providence. Fairy Garden. Shadows on an appleknocker that my mother’s company used to make.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alcott, andrew, art, brandywine museum, concord library, concord museum, emerson, illustration, jamie, journal, men of concord, nathaniel, nc wyeth, painting, postaday, Renaissance board, thoreau, Treasure Island on May 6, 2016| 7 Comments »
If you can get to the N.C. Wyeth exhibit at the Concord Museum by September 18, I think it will be worth your while.
You’re familiar with the family of painters, the Wyeths, right? Best known are Nathaniel C., his son Andrew, and Andrew’s son, Jamie. Perhaps you have been to the Brandywine Museum in Chadd’s Ford, Pennsylvania, which got its start with generations of Wyeth art.
N.C. fell in love with Henry D. Thoreau‘s writing in 1909, made several pilgrimages to Concord, and eventually conceived of a book that he would illustrate , calling it Men of Concord: And Some Others as Portrayed in the Journal of Henry David Thoreau.
The Concord Museum and the Concord Library are each hosting exhibits related to the book, but if you like N.C.’s art, the museum exhibit is the one to see. It’s small but informative and lovely to look at.
N.C. was known for heroic illustrations of classics like Treasure Island, and his characters’ facial expressions and body postures always tell a story. That might be too literal for some art lovers, but I like it. I like the looks on the faces of three men Thoreau described in his journal as “slimy.” I like the watchful, coiled bodies of the muskrat hunters on the river, and the youthful innocence of N.C.’s Thoreau — a quality I have never associated with the writer.
One fanciful painting with bluebirds in a bubble of light like angels over Thoreau’s head seems like hagiography. It’s not my favorite work here, but it’s an intriguing summary of the writer’s interests. And people do make a religion out of Thoreau and Transcendentalism, so maybe it’s not surprising. The whole Concord gang — including Bronson Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson — is in the show, minus most of the brilliant women, of course.
One thing I learned was that N.C. had his pencil sketches converted into glass slides, and then he projected them onto the Renaissance board he favored so he could work directly on the enlarged sketch.
More on the museum website.
The hut is a replica of the cabin Thoreau stayed in at Walden Pond and is located on the grounds of the museum.
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 