studio notes 1

There had been a poll at some point, yall had asked for more behind-the-scenes things and in the studio stories.

I am very fortunate to have room for a studio, room where i can close the door and leave it a disaster. Very thankful for my studio practice, and that i also have the two blessings of time and space. Many in-progress photos i do not share in real-time because i have this superstition about eyes on unfinished work. They get to see the light now that they’re all done.

The year started with my dad asking me how many works i had made in 2018. No idea. No way to tell. 2019 began the numbering, which i am faithful to, and May 1st saw painting #200 come to completion. It began with wood sized 6”x6” through 9”x9”, inspired surely due to artist Mariah Hope. I got to know her over the course of my first residency in Ellijay, Georgia. Still thinking about my time there and surprised in the unexpected ways it is still helping me along, many months later.

This work was an exhalation, so many thoughts that had been buzzing transferred onto smaller paintings. Figuring, sorting, fighting. That must have been eighty or so paintings. The next superstition i’ve bared in public already: i always sweep and clean my studio after something feels done - usually a big project or say, eighty smaller paintings.

Wompus cat is usually on hand, or in my lap, if she can manage it. She’s getting older and beginning to spend more time thinking about being outside - her spring days have seen her on the porch, a little nervous about venturing much further out. Despite missing her in my daylight studio hours, she still logs time with me up there at night.

Recently i have moved rooms for where i paint, after sprucing up the walls of the studio in the photos. We live in an old house, no central air or heat, and the room i moved into has a working window unit and working fan. You can imagine how an upstairs room might start to heat up in the humidity of a Louisiana summer.

The new room is bare bones, i have spread everything out on the floor, and i sort of work in a circular motion around the room. There are often two to three paintings going on at once, sometimes more.

Nearing painting #220 so far this year, and working towards 100 mules for Finster Fest, close to 60 mules are in the herd. Been anxious to begin making larger paintings again, one has met completion but the other two are stalled in puzzlement.

Faulkner's Ode to Mules

This is an outtake from Flags in the Dust. Most readers are familiar with his quote “a mule will labor ten years for the chance to kick a man once.” Was astounded to find it is actually a much longer ode to the south’s four legged laborer. Flags in the Dust is a long and colorful story, this particular aside was a small and unexpected gem in a muddy backyard creek.

”Round and round the mule went, setting its narrow, deer-like feet delicately down in the hissing cane-pith, its neck bobbing limber as a section of rubber hose in the collar, with its trace-galled flanks and flopping, lifeless ears, and its half-closed eyes drowsing venomously behind pale lids, apparently asleep with the monotony of its own motion. Some Homer of the cotton fields should sing the sage of the mule and his place in the South. He it was, more than any other one creature or thing, who, steadfast to the land when all else faltered before the hopeless juggernaut of circumstance, impervious to conditions that broke men’s hearts because of his venomous and patient preoccupation with the immediate present, won the prone South from beneath the iron heel of Reconstruction and taught it pride again through humility and courage through adversity overcome; who accomplished the well-night impossible despite hopeless odds, by sheer and vindictive patience. Father and mother he does not resemble, sons and daughters he will never have; vindictive and patient (it is a known fact he will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once); solitary but without pride, self-sufficient but without vanity; his voice is his own derision. Outcast and pariah, he has neither friend, wife, mistress nor sweetheart; celibate, he is unscarred, possesses neither pillar nor desert cave, he is not assaulted by temptations nor flagellated by dreams nor assuaged by visions; faith, hope, and charity are not his. Misanthropic, he labors six days without reward for one creature whom he hates, bound with chains to another whom he despises, and spends the seventh day kicking or being kicked by his fellows. Misunderstood [portion removed with regard to modern times], he performs alien actions among alien surroundings; he finds bread not only for a race, but for an entire form of behavior; meek, his inheritance is cooked away from him along with his soul in a glue factory. Ugly, untiring and perverse, he can be moved neither by reason, flattery, nor promise of reward; he performs his humble monotonous duties without complaint, and his meed is blows. Alive, he is halted through the world, an object of general derision; unwept, unhonored and unsung, he bleaches his awkward, accusing bones among rusting cans and broken crockery and worn-out automobile tires on lonely hillsides, while his flesh soars unawares against the blue in the craws of buzzards.”

This is taken from the book, and i will be glad to remove it if it infringes upon any rights of anything. This seems useful to describe the why and how of mules, with Faulkner’s rich and perhaps arrogant prose. It was also difficult to find online! Had to remedy that for the legions of mule folks struggling to understand their history and past purpose.

Almighty Mule Movers - 2 - William Faulkner

“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.” 
― William C. Faulkner

We read As I Lay Dying in high school. It was an annoying and seemingly Beckett trek through nonsense and ridiculous southern jargon. It was set in a place i did not care for, and the characters were awful folks, each one. We joked about the chapter that simply read, “My mother is a fish.” Eye roll after eye roll, and a dozen pained sighs. May have read The Sound and the Fury also, but don’t remember getting too far into it, it was like climbing through word briers in the dark.

We read Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, too, and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Never would have expected to ever re-read that annoying symbol-filled nonsense. Yet, in college, i went back in. Turns out Chopin’s Edna was not a horrible selfish mother. Turns out Hurston’s Janie was not an equally selfish rambling woman. So what about Faulkner?

It began with a friend’s copy of Light in August, then Go Down Moses, and The Wild Palms. With time, i thought maybe i understood. In the cold Kentucky winter, it felt like the heat back home. The dust came off the road and the humidity wrapped around me. People talked in a way that reminded me of folks. That was it, i was gone.

The mining of his work began in 2018 at my artist residency, underlining old sayings or particular phrasing that was black-snake vivid home-past-speak. His intensity, his preference for drinking, his scribbling on his walls, his anger, his need to create. They all got me, i imagined i could identify with this ghost. With all of my heroes, i don’t want to ever learn too much - i don’t want my glass castles pebbled down.

His bio can be found here. He lived in New Orleans for a time, he reached modest acclaim, he created his own county, his own people. He hated air-condition, and liked a good drink. He died a little mysteriously, he wrote his most famous book in six weeks, he was 5 1/2 feet tall. He raised mules.

It is worth saying that his language at times, and perspective - obviously - can be thought of as outdated. Having just finished Flags in the Dust, the way Faulkner broaches old southern pride via his chacters to the point of buffoonery says all i could say about it.

So, i’ll leave you with that, now. These photos are from a long ago trip to Oxford and Rowan Oak. In my next two posts i’ll share some of my Faulkner-driven sketchbook pages and a particular passage that is an ode to the southern mule.

“Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing.” 
― William Faulkner

A room inside Rowan Oak, where Faulkner had begun to scrawl the timeline of a book he was working on upon his walls.

Faulkner’s grave in Oxford, a pilgrimage spot for writers, artists and southern gothic fans.

Excerpts

Like most artists and writers, and folks that like to keep track of time with words and images, i have drawerfuls of sketchbooks. I am mighty bad at planning paintings, and worse at following through. Whenever i get in a rough spot for inspiration, i turn to that drawerful and see what keeps coming up. Those pages get pinned to the wall so i have to look at them and think about them, and hopefully carry them on through. When the painting gets made, and when you get that painting, you get the sketchbook page, too. It’s a full circle thing. It would be strange if the idea got left hanging without it’s fruit. Anyway. Here’s the first of many sketchbook page posts. Excerpts.