An Unfamiliar Medium

  

"Dunsmore Park,' Lithographer's Crayon, 5" x 8.5", '09

  In the post-mortem dispatching of personal effects, items that were of great value to the Departed may be overlooked, while conventional items may get cherished and coveted by family and friends. So for that reason, I have made a premature disbursement of this little drawing to my dentist and wife, who happens to be his assistant and bookkeeper.

  I drew this on site from my truck window with the complete certainty that I had just suffered either a heart attack or some major coronary event. It was Spring of ’09. I returned from a working trip to St. Louis, where I had spent an entire week immersed body and soul in an installation at the White Flag gallery there. The long hours and intense pace didn’t seem unusual to the crew I was working with—all men in their early thirties.  I got into the spirit of the event, which was part Dionysian, owing to the free-flowing spirits.

  When I awoke on my first morning back in Cincinnati, I couldn’t move. There was a relentless pain and pressure in my chest. As I weighed my options, I was fully conscious. If I lay perfectly still I would experience only a dull persistent central body ache that was semi-bearable. I eventually navigated from being fully prone to shuffling around bent at the waist, clutching my chest. I was in a game of Hamlet, veering between pretending nothing had happened to “something has to be done.” In all likelihood, the latter would include being cracked open like a walnut by interns, followed by the loss of our home. My wife was uncharacteristically panicked by my behavior, which included long stints of sitting on the kitchen floor with legs fully straight. It seemed to help when I pushed my back against the kitchen cabinets.

  I was eventually able to drive. Though funds were rapidly diminishing, I persisted in my Do Nothing regimen. I drove to my favorite local haunt, a little park near a Jewish Cemetery. On this beautiful afternoon I took out sketchbook and lithograph crayons, a medium that I had been dabbling with for years, but had never quite mastered. While it has its virtues: tonal subtleties, spontaneity, rich darks, simplicity (no messy tubes, jars or brushes)—erasing is not possible. As with watercolor, there is a narrow tolerance for screwing up.

  Through the pleasurable and intense work of looking at nature, even this tamed variety, I was able to deflect my worry about my condition. Of course, I was aware that life was precious beyond all the worth with which I had, up until that point, imbued it. I wanted to record my seeing in that heightened state of awareness. dove into the unfamiliar medium, only seeing and feeling. In that narrow window, I became adept with the lithograph crayon. Truthfully, I would enjoy doing this kind of work exclusively if I somehow had the means to sell it on a regular basis. But I am known as a graphic wise-guy and that is apparently my artistic destiny.

  As for the chest pain, with my last $100 I went to an acupuncturist. I told her that I was an old hippie. I wanted her to see if there was any way she could tell if there had been some coronary event, or if perhaps the pain came from another source. To my astonishment, she found that the source of the relentless chest pressure was a nerve trapped under the rib cage. The St. Louis session exacerbated a long-dormant condition that had been caused by an incident nearly three decades earlier. After defacing a billboard, I slipped and fell on the plank beneath, cracking some lower ribs. When I heard the news that all symptoms had a concrete physical cause unrelated to my heart, I began the process of consciously healing. I've never stopped since.

  This little drawing, deft and non-provocative, is a souvenir of one afternoon when I stared mortality down and found delightful life instead. It is now in the hands of people I greatly respect, who perform their daily artistry at an intensity few “fine” artists will ever know.  I hope it will provide some solace to their patients, lost in Novocain reveries.

Ex Libris Bookplates II

This is a continuation of the previous post. Sorry for the lapse--life got int the way.

Ex Libris Bookplates I

L ike postage stamps and wine labels, modern Ex Libris bookplates combine words and images in unique ways that are both functional and aesthetically pleasing. All three are produced at predictable sizes--and until the Digital Age--printed by offset lithography. They exhibit engraving techniques and letterforms that were developed over centuries.
  Unlike their graven cousins, bookplates were made for individuals, not companies. There is no hierarchy of decision-makers to put a design through rigorous stages of approval. A bookplate is simply commissioned by somebody who values his or her personal library. Within this field, quirkiness and innovation are virtues because they celebrate the individual. The more successful examples make a poetic or universal statement while honoring the patron's ego.
  In several future posts I will have more to say on the subject. For now, feast your eyes on these random examples of the genre at its finest. They were a gift from my wife, the cartoonist Carol Tyler. She purchased an almanac of bookplates at a fundraising sale for the library at St. Mary Of The Woods College near Terre Haute, Indiana. Most of the plates date from the late 19th Century to the outbreak of WWI. They are from both American and European collections. All were glued onto heavy black paper, sometimes front and back, making razor blade triage necessary. I am now the temporary steward of this treasure trove and will store them in an archival setting. Come back in early '12 to see a new batch.

 

Why Kindle When You Can Schmindle?

This is the first Schmindle volume "published" (at Fedex/Kinko's) as an 8 1/2" x 11" double-sided sheet, folded in quarters and stapled. It is available through my Etsy Store:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/ScribeArt

 

  Though Ludwig Beethoven's (1770-1827) compositions are among humankind's greatest achievements, his love letters reveal the temperament of a frustrated suitor whose overwrought prose would benefit from a rewrite by the average Tin Pan Alley songwriter. The Schmindle Pamphlet Library has discovered a small cache of his letters, luckily never mailed, in an article from the March 1930 issue of The Etude Magazine. 

Pity the Rich Reveler, Too

Ragtime Central

Every time I log onto Virginia (D.C. area) pianist "Perfessor" Bill Edwards' site (www.perfessorbill.com) I consciously think, "This is too good to be true." At first glance it's devoted to the preservation of Ragtime,  Popular Songs and Show-Tunes from the early Twentieth Century. Navigating through the various links, you'll soon discover that it's a veritable nexus of American cultural history. In the erudite commentary that accompanies all the original sheet music covers, the master pianist explains the historical context of each song and writes about its musical structure in easily understandable terms. More often than not, biographical details about the individual musicians and composers and the various bands with which they recorded and performed are provided. Over the past six years, Edwards' activities on the site have increasingly focused on writing and research. There are over 190 biographies of ragtime-era composers, publishers and performers from the obscure to renowned, such as George Gershwin, Charles Chaplin and Irving Berlin. It should take the average reader more than a week of full days to read through them all (starting at http://ragpiano.com/ragtime3.shtml). While hearing his spotless renditions of each song, you can feast your eyes on the cover art (these little postage stamp versions were the best I could download). The postage stamp covers (thumbnails actually) are actually quite useful.
  Hover the mouse over then and you find out more about each publication. Click on them and you get a separate window with a much larger sized cover and a MIDi with the information all in one. It was designed to allow for multi-tiered browsing, and focusing on one piece if need be through that method, making the most efficient use of space.

Please note that that the top of each of the pbmidi pages, the ones with the explanations and covers, the following text is shown:

Left Click on title to play MIDI or thumbnail to View full size cover

Right Click to Download either (in most browsers)

 With the exception of French fin de siecle posters, I don't know another era or site where there is so much drop-dead gorgeous hand lettering in one place. Even if you have little interest in ragtime as a musical form, reading his thoughts about its composition is like sitting at the feet of great tradesman/writers, such as the late Robert Pirsig ("Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance") or Anthony Bourdain ("Kitchen Confidential") who write with acute clarity borne of experience. Your horizon will be broadened by the encounter, even as it will be brightened by hearing Edwards tickle the 88s. By all means, buy his CDs and tell anyone who will listen about this Great American resource and living treasure.

Sholem Asch: An Appreciation

Translated from the Yiddish, East River (1946) by the Polish-born American writer Sholem Asch (1880-1957) resonates like rare microfilm. If you are patient enough to crank the handle, the research will yield bountiful gifts attainable from no other source. His accounts of early Twentieth Century New York and the cultural clashes that defined its identity have a legitimacy that is informed by first-hand witness and exacting scholarship. Unlike the suave pastiche of the modern documentary style that partakes heavily of familiar borrowed images and formulaic devices, the grainy details that Asch’s prose reveal are stunning for their novelty and staying power. This is truly living history. The arc of the storyline is interpolated by polemics about such compelling topics as the infamous Triangle fire, the meteoric rise of Jazz and its immediate social consequences, conflicting ideologies within the labor movement, the clutches of Tammany Hall—such asides remind the reader that there actually is a narrator behind the scenes of this captivating drama. Journalism is only one component of his vital and dynamic voice: humorist, poet, epic storyteller, Asch is also noteworthy for his religious scholarship. His depiction of the dynamics of Irish Catholicism is as authentic (though kinder) than the harsh narrative of Chicagoan James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonnigan Trilogy.

Upon the microcosm of the orthodox Davidowsky family, Asch unleashes forces that constantly threaten to usurp the ancient traditions the patriarch Moshe Wolf attempts to uphold. This devout father is beset with adversity, and like Job, withstands the challenges to his enduring faith. His favorite son Nathaniel is stricken with infantile paralysis while in his late adolescence. The younger son Irving, the mother’s favorite, heeds the siren call of the American dream. He overrides ethical considerations using predatory business tactics to rise high in the garment industry. In his vivid depiction of the garment trade, Asch equals Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. Amazingly, that is only a subplot! The story arc is driven by the inclusion of a devout Irish Catholic girl into the family. Her presence galvanizes the crippled boy into a religious healing. Her marriage to the successful brother rends the family asunder before transforming it on distinctly American ground. It is refreshing to see that no character comes out of these travails smelling like a rose. Through dialog and interior monologue, we see all the principles struggling with their personal and religious identities. The bit players, too, are vivid despite the broad strokes with which they are painted. In this seamless work of timeless literature, all characters are essential to the final outcome.

Asch is unique among Yiddish writers for his devotional literature about Christianity. His Christian trilogy The Nazarene (1939), The Apostle (1943) and Mary (1949) reveals his vast knowledge of history and of his people. Regardless of your stance on Christianity, you will be startled by the details Asch unearths and with which he embellishes the dusty lore (or True Religion, if you prefer). I strongly sensed that East River was part of his biblical continuum. His discussion of the issues in which various factions were embroiled within the Jewish community of Manhattan hearken back to the politics of ancient Jerusalem. He is unsparing in his critique of those power brokers who corrupt the message of his beloved Prophets. Perhaps it is the secular airing of those accusations in his literature, coupled with his upholding of Jesus as the true Messiah that made him a controversial figure during his lifetime. He is deserving of much wider recognition as one of the greatest American authors to have written in his native tongue. Among those “polemics” which I sited are several passages celebrating the egalitarian ideals of the early American vision. For all of his unsparing depictions of corruption and squalor, his vision of this country is ultimately a patriotic one.

From an NPR interview with Pete Seeger (who recorded a Christmas record written by Asch in the mid-‘50s), I learned that Moses Asch, his son, founded Folkways Records. This was the mainstay of the folk revival from the ‘40s and well beyond. During the late ‘30s when portable recording was cutting-edge technology, his father asked him to broadcast a dire radio warning from a portable disk to the Jews remaining in Europe: Get out while you can!

 "Sweatshop," William Gropper. No Date. Lithograph