"You see I usually find myself among strangers because
I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to
me." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby."
11/21/13
ABH #2/Mary Jo Bole
My Then: Requiem for a Family Tree, 2013, 32.6 x 36 inches, pigment print on rice paper |
I grew up very free to roam my world, in a decaying
mid-century Cleveland, Ohio. I am more comfortable with things
emptying out and fading. Maybe we need our secrets, real and imagined, with all
our ever-present communication. Although I was born in 1956, my cognition
begins with my Granny Bole, born in 1881. She shared her life stories with me. Her
antiques, trove of early family photographs, trunks of rotting clothing and
finger bowls had a profound impact on me. This joins and collides with the span
of my decades, mixed with sardonic visions for a frightening future. Michael
Lesy’s book Wisconsin DeathTrip remains a
clarifying voice for me when considering issues around this concept. Lesy uncovered
a collection of Victorian glass plates in the Wisconsin Historical Society made
by a small town's photographer. What fascinates me about the vernacular images
is that they sat in a box for roughly the span of a human lifetime and that
what once was average and everyday had become singular and provocative.
11/15/13
ABH Traveler #1: Arthur Dove
11/10/13
ABH #1/Cynthia Hartling
Wyoming Series, oil on linen, 24” x 26”, c. 2013 |
Indian Time, (no time like now), pressed heat, liquid matter smoothed over
oblong clouds of pink flesh toned, squeezed, flattened orange meets
space that separates, silence in the in-between places-some other place
the shape of form, where
It takes me, to get at, pare down red-handed
linen skin raw earth-to
not know
Desire: the hoi polloi
strangeness of it all
to squander, disperse,
forget, wander about
tell-tale Heart, now you
really let go……
in the wide open- directionless
11/9/13
Where is the “here” than which it would be preferable to be anywhere but?
"Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart
with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they
flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights;
where I woke sobbing for joy.” -- Emily Brontë, “Wuthering Heights.”
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