ART and CRUELTY: What, if any, are the Links? -- by Ross Bachelder 12 28 11

December 28, 2011

On reading  today's above-the-fold story in today's New York Times about the unspeakable cruelties perpetrated by men against women in war-torn Somalia, I find myself returning again to an issue I've been struggling with for a good two or three years: Do fine and performing artists have a moral obligation to address issues of inhumanity in their art, no matter how obliquely?

It is a daunting, troublesome question for this maverick multi-media creative -- writer, musician and visual artist -- a deciple of the Tanscendentalists who celebrated the supremacy of the individual and his implied right, on condition of social responsibility, to be precisely who he is while inhabiting the realm of creative self-expression.

The history of the visual arts shows us with ____ decisiveness that the gulf between sweet depictions of flowers in a meadow (Kinkaid) and frightening elucidations of death and decimation (Heronymous Bosch) is both vast and irrefutable.

      

HE'S NUTSO! (Or perhaps he just has a nasty headache...)

Nutso!
I've lost my very sanity!
Away from me it ranity!
I'm bereft of my mind -- An occipital bind!

A major mental

       calamity!

I've mislaid my brainbag o' marbles!
I no longer know where they arbles!
My head doesn't rattle --
Can't tell where it's attle!
    Yet it couldn't have gone all that farbles!

I despair for my absentee thinking!
My hope for a cure is sinking!
Phrenologically Absent --
No chance for rehabsent!
      Just one thought left: this is stinking!

RB 7 2 11

NATURALLY OCCURING ART: THE WELLSPRING OF CREATIVITY FOR US ALL...



Blood Breakast: Stumbled On Art,
Photographed by Ross Bachelder At
Panera Breads in Dover, NH on 6 10 11

 I'm increasingly fascinated with what is often the utterly random nature of creativity. Things that we as artists labor for countless hours to conceive and then make beautiful -- landscapes, portraits, still lifes, abstracts, assemblages -- can be discovered at any moment and at any place in the real world after having been created by chance with what can only be described as astounding aleatory virtuosity.


Here are three remarkable examples of this artist-free genre -- what we might call "Found Beauty" or "Serendipitous Findings" or "Stumbled On Art."

Setting out purposefully to discover such naturally occuring masterworks can be a superb visual training tool for practicing artists. One can think of it as a playful and yet constructive search for the Instant Sublime that's all around us -- moments and snippets of inexplicable beauty that some would call inscrutable and others would call the Hand of God.

Blood Breakfast: This image (upper right), taken just this morning at Panera Breads in Dover, New Hampshire, is actually of the remants of the toast I had -- with tea and the New York Times -- garnished, quite unexpectedly, by rivulets of blood from a hard-to-heal cut I incurred while working as a picture framer.






Aerial Splat: Art from On High,

Conceived and Executed by a Winged

Proponent of Outside Art. -- Photo by

Ross Bachelder, Portsmouth, NH 2010.

Madison Ave-Stract: I snapped this

 picture (lower right) while walking against traffic in a

pedestrian-choked intersection on Madison Avenue 

in New York City in the summer of 2009. I'd come

into town to see the Kandinsky exhibit at the

Guggenheim Museum and the Tim Burton exhibit

at MoMA. What excited me was the thought that

some construction worker, going about his task of

marking a patch of pavement for repair, quite un-

wittingly created a work of art -- indeed, Street Art --

That with proper framing could easily have been

featured in a SoHo exhibit, then lauded by the

Press as a marvelously fresh artwork by an

emerging darling of the Gallery Set.

Acknowledging the random nature of beauty -- and

recognizing its function as the visual artists' primary

source of inspiration -- is a supreme act of humility --

a recognition that we're neither omnicient nor omni-

potent as humans. On the contrary, we're woven

intricately into the fabric of all living things and

utterly dependent on them for our creativity. For that

reason alone, we must take care of this little Orb we

call home and preserve it, as little tampered with as

possible, for furture generations.

                           --     Ross Bachelder 6 10 11

And really, are these ubiquitous elegances, waiting unpretentiously to be discovered, not the very wellspring from which artists derive the often spectacular results of their own passionate search for all things beautiful? They're full of mystery, of color, texture, volume and geometry, these discoveries, and within their magical propertiess are lessons for artists of any kind, anywhere, to learn.

Aerial Splat: A powerful, even majestic instant abstract (at left), created by another of the earth's naturally gifted artists, the common pigeon. The more experimental artists are always looking for fresh approaches and unconventional media, a process that can require hours of theorizing and experimen-tation. But the pigeon -- perhaps an unheralded pioneer in the genre of performance art -- just makes his beauty naturally, with one finely crafted drop of poop -- in this case on a plank of the Middle Bridge in Portsmouth -- and compositional gifts we as humans can only struggle to acquire.





Madison Ave-Stract: Street-wise Graffiti, Created by construction workers and photographed by Ross Bachelder
in the Summer of 2009.











Our Friends the Trees -- May 8th, 2011

Our Friends the Trees -- May 8th, 2011

There is something irresistible about trees.



A recently discovered friend near the end of Goose Island
Trail, Creek Farm Reservation, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

(Photo by Ross Bachelder -- May 6th, 2011)



One can plant them, nurture them, doctor them, climb them, trim them, sit beneath them, contemplate them, display them, alter them, carve heartfelt sentiments on them, make the finest furniture and the most accomodating homes from them.

And one can chop them down or take them for granted, but one had better have a good reason doing so.

Is it not remarkable that one can have a tree as a friend? Trees have such monumentality! Such quiet nobility! And they're marvelously steadfast, meaning no ill for any human as they stand at the ready, tall and available, offering shelter, shade and the irresistible fruits of their earth-bound fecundity.

And yet many communities, countries and cultures around the world are at war with trees, exploiting them for profit, destroying them to make room for questionable developments, showing naught but the most profound disrespect for their invaluable presence in our lives.



The beginning of Goose Island Trail,

A most inviting path to the ocean's edge

at Creek Farm Reservation in Portsmouth -- 

One of the many forests cared for and

protected by the Society for the Pro-

tection of New Hampshire Forests.

(Photo by Ross Bachelder --  May 6th, 2011)

 Whole city streets have been stripped of their trees, robbing their inhabitants of their breathtaking beauty and indisputable utility. Fields and meadows, once lovingly decorated with trees, have been ravished by the wanton, wholesale destruction of forest and grove, fresh-born sapling and gnarled centurian. Trees hundreds and even thousands of years old have been vandalized for cruel and senseless reasons.

As we rush from spring into summer here in New England, let us pause and reflect on trees as indispensible resources, as living, growing objects of beauty, as protectors of ourselves and our planet, and as the inspiration for often sublime poetry that speaks to the importance of trees in our lives from the cradle, where we lie as infants within easy reach of a tree we'll soon be climbing, to the grave, where trees will without hesitation offer themselves as our eternal companions.

What is there not to love about trees?

Be good to them. They deserve our respect! One day soon, in rain or sun, go and sit beneath a tree you've met for the very first time. Read a book there. Draw the tree and its surroundings. And listen to that tree and its neighbors as they whisper amongst themselves about their day. They've much to teach us if we'll just slow down and allow ourselves to be open to their nearly infinite possibilities.

                                                                                             -- Ross Bachelder
                                                                                                 May 8th, 2011


Like any good and loyal friend, a tree has a natural inclination

To reach out and touch us, provide us with shelter and

protect us from harmful influences. This tree at Goose Island

Trail in Portsmouth has the shores of the Atlantic as its

constant companion, but would welcome a visit from you!

Photo by Ross Bachelder -- May 6th, 2011



"Did you know that trees talk? Well, they do. They talk to each other, and they'll talk to you if you listen. Trouble is, white man don't listen. They never learned to listen to other voices in nature. But I have learned a lot from trees: sometimes about the weather, sometimes about animals, sometimes about the Great Spirit." 

        

       -- Tatange Mani, a Stoney Indian,

          quoted in "Touch the Earth." 

                                                                                  

Willie and Jeannette: Fragments from a New England Marriage...

Willie and Jeannette. Together, those two names sound nice, don't they! Warm and poignant, even melliflous in the musical sense -- their combined sound rolls rhythmically off the tongue like the title of some lovingly preserved French folk song -- and with a welcome wisp of nostalgia, not unlike that silk scarf you found one Sunday morning on the vacant chair of a restaurant, prettily flowered and infused with some indefinable perfume from a day in the city or perhaps a long-forgotten tryst.

I learned of Willie and Jeannette from a recent frame shop customer of mine who brought her parents' 1950's Era snapshots in for framing. While her Mom and Dad are no longer alive in the temporal sense, I could tell from talking with that customer that in her mind and especially in her heart, they're still very much alive.

The moment I saw those two snapshots, I knew I wanted to write at least a little something about these two elusive New Englanders with their quixotic smiles and easy-going appearances.

Jeannette, quite dashing in her stylish hat
and coat and her warm, winning smile...

There was something emotionally powerful in that image of Jeannette -- something elegant and mysterious in her hair, her eyes, her hat and coat and her demeanor -- that made me want to capture her story and hold it gently in my writer's hands, if only for one sweet, evanescent moment in the relentless onrush of Time.

All I know -- and all that I suspect I'll ever know -- about Jeannette is that she was born in Newmarket, New Hampshire of parents with a rich French heritage, and that like countless other young women with northern New England roots, she toiled for many years in shoe shops to make a living. The rest of what I know of her will remain purely conjectural and must be gleaned from a long and caring look into her eyes.

As for Willie, the man perched so jauntily on the hood of his c. 1950 Plymouth, I learned from his daughter that he was born in Biddeford, Maine, drove a taxi at times to earn his keep, and played both the harmonica and the accordion -- instruments that can claim a proud history as the instruments of choice for New Englanders of French Canadian heritage.

Our Willie must have fallen instantly in love with his Jeannette, perhaps when she hailed a taxi and found that handsome and yet self-effacing young man behind the wheel, cheerfully asking her where she needed to go. Had I been that driver, I know that I would have been swept quietly off my feet by the sight of this woman in my rear view mirror, she with her playfully off-center hat, elegantly designed winter coat and impish smile, dressed for an event that simply had to be far, far away from her ploddingly repetitious days in the mechanical din of a darkly lit shoe shop.

Willie the Taxi Driver, enjoying a relaxing
moment on the Hood of his smiling Plymouth...

Where might Jeannette have been going that day? And did her ride in Willie's taxi lead quickly to a string of more purposeful encounters, sans taxi? Perhaps their story took a very different turn that day, and like two tiny, delicate seeds planted in the freshly turned soil of a field on a country road in the village of Newmarket, their serendipitous encounter on a city street needed  the better part of a sunlit summer season to grow into love.

Did Willie wait a week or two, ask Jeannette to be his partner in a Friday night dance party, then play straight into her heart on his shiny red accordion, fingers flying across the keys and over the buttons, sending a musical message of the most intense attraction, pleading with his song to take her into his taxi driver's arms and become his wife? And did Jeannette hear both the passion and sincerity of his plea and agree without hesitation to join him in the certain-to-be adventure of their still youthful existences?

In a very real sense, the story of Willie and Jeannette is the story of early Twentieth Century life in northern New England: Two earnest, optimistic children of immigrants, new to life in an unfamiliar city, coming together by chance, then going together, hand in hand and with characteristic American optimism, into a future both joyful and unpredictable in its yet-to-be experienced details.

What, then, did you see when you looked into the eyes of Willie and Jeannette?

Perhaps, like me, you suddenly and happily realized that you could have been looking at yourself. And I suspect that would have been just fine with you.

                                                                
                                     -- Ross Bachelder January 28th, 2011

What's on My Mind Today...

Drip and Splash

Me,

I drip and splash --

Just like Jackson, I've been told --

Through the numbingly prosaic,
Blurred and blended days
Of my quirky little pilgrimage,

Entirely bare-foot and lacking any caution,

Across the blood-drawing shards of time.

Planning is anathema.

I stumble through the stacks

Of the virtual library of my mind,

Blindfolded sans equilibrium,

Then stop dead in my tracks
When the spirit moves me,
Regaining what little composure
I imagined however foolishly I had,
Then choosing that one thin volume high above me --
The one with the frayed green spine
And coffee stains on the cover --

The one lone book, I feel certain, that has
The emotional heft and singular power
To provoke me into action
And make at least nominal sense
Of the next fifty moments of my aliveness.

I drip,
And then I splash.

And drip and splash again.

And then I fold up my easel,

Clean out my brushes,

Don my favorite hat --

The one that can no longer contain

My ropey Repunzeling hair (not to mention
The headstrong turbulence of my murcurial emotions) --

And head out into the traffic-choked streets
Of the urban wilderness,

Moving less than carefully --

A brave and wreckless toreador,

Surrounded by chromed-and-lacquered

Pavement-pawing bulls

With raucus horns and glaring headlights --

And me, more determined than ever
To harness the relentless onrush of those screaming beasts

And that angry pride of internal lions --

Or perhaps even occasional bursts of contentment --
That invade my teeming psyche

And make me want to paint.

RB

January 4th, 2011

One Path Into the New Year: Walking the Middle Bridge in Portsmouth...

Jan 1, 2011
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
photos: 13 – 17 MB
Public on the web

Each New Year's Day, which also happens to be my birthday, I find a beautiful, peaceful place to walk. This year I chose to walk the Middle Bridge on the edge of downtown Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The Middle Bridge, as everyone in the Seacoast NH/Southern Maine region knows, is in danger of being closed forever, so it is with more than a touch of latent sadness that we walk this magnificent bridge that lifts on command to allow water traffic to enter the harbor for both pleasure boating and nautical commerce. When exporing a site I'm more interested in the details -- the forgotten minutia which altogether form the larger picture -- than in the broader, tourist's-eye view of a site. This collection of photographs will show you just how detailed my approach tends to be. My walk was both a pleasure and a gift to myself for having made it this far in my journey on the planet. Allow me, then, to share it with you. -- Ross Bachelder January 1st, 2011

NOTE: Click the slideshow to go to Picasa, where you can view images larger and slow down the slideshow if you like.