More Morsels from Les

Above Those clever Victorians. This turn-of-the-century drawing, published in the Strand Magazine (c1907), is made entirely of shorthand notations.

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Meanwhile, Les Coleman shares his latest thunks—

Overnight intruders broke into the clay pigeon factory and shot all the pigeons.

Ping: Pong's friend.

Blind, Deaf and Dumb came to their senses.

He sold his soul, and a second-hand car, to the Devil.

There was no conversation to speak of.

The lead balloon was proving impossible to blow up.

Nudity: the height of fashion.

Cold weather caused the skull's teeth to chatter.

Parachute complaint forms need to be filled out in
advance.

A face-off ensued between the two cuckoo clocks.

The deaf piano tuner lived in the same street as the
blind art critic.

Eve went to the greengrocers to buy some apples.

A leaking sieve only added to their problems.

Copyright © Les Coleman

Jared Rogness | E-Chicken Extraordinaire

Copyright © Jared Rogness. All rights reserved.

Whatever else may be said of teaching, it passes like a high speed train and carries ones life along with it.

My first college-level teaching position began 40 years ago, which means that I've just concluded my eightieth semester. In each of those years, I've worked with about 150 students, sometimes more. There was a time, I like to think, when I could recognize the names of all of them, usually because I remembered their work. Despite moving from school to school, many I can still recall, and there are some I continue to hear from.

Beginning in the late 1990s, for example, I had the memorable opportunity to work with a talented young illustrator named Jared Rogness (BFA 2003). Most likely, I doubt if I taught him a thing. He was one of those "driven" enthusiasts for pen-and-ink drawing who had probably been drawing nonstop since early childhood (a species now close to extinction). As an undergraduate, he was an editorial cartoonist for the student newspaper (he called himself "e-chicken"), for which he was doing professional work that was amazingly original, intelligent and of course well-drawn.

Years later, after somehow surviving the ordeal of making a living while continuing to do things of quality, he settled in California, working as a storyboard illustrator for Hollywood, while making imaginative comics. Reproduced above is a black-and-white drawing he made recently, in advance of his current major project, the first installment of a new creator-owned comic, titled The Knightmare of Nabokov.

I still recall so many drawings he made over the years. There was a period of time, for example, when I was the art director of what was then a small but widely-known magazine (a National Magazine Award winner), admired in those days for the quality of its artwork as well as for its writing. It was my good luck (and that of the magazine) to be able on occasion to hire Jared Rogness to illustrate some of the short fiction. He produced the most astonishing illustrations, some of which can still be seen on his current web portfolio. Two of those pieces are shown below.

Copyright © Jared Rogness. All rights reserved.

Copyright © Jared Rogness. All rights reserved.

Les Coleman's Doors

Above An ominous drawing by British artist/writer Les Coleman, titled Shadow (c2007). Copyright © Les Coleman, all rights reserved.

Film Review  |  The Architecture of Doom a film by Peter Cohen, 1991. VHS video. 119 minutes. Color. Available from First Run / Icarus Films, 32 Court Street, 21st Floor, Brooklyn NY 11201.

There are countless historical videos on Adolf Hitler, the Third Reich, and the circumstances of the death camps, but this is undoubtedly one of the best. From its beginning moments, which consist of a drawn-out, completely mute flight over a tranquil German village, this film demands our attention, then holds us firmly by the throat for a full two hours. Its power in part is undoubtedly due to the night-marish subject matter (I couldn't sleep after watching it). Yet, few accounts of World War II Germany are as memorable, which I think is mostly attributable to the images used (photographs, revealing documents, artworks, and rare and often shocking film footage, especially that made by the Nazis), the artfully insistent pace of the editing, and the persuasive clarity of the narration. It is not a film that is summarized easily, but its underlying premise is that Hitler (who had initially wanted to be an artist, then an architect) was not entirely irrational, but rather that the things he did, while outrageous and revolting, were seemingly logical methods by which he could "art direct" or "design" society. A devotee of Darwinian natural selection, he believed that the natural process by which the weak (or unfit) are self-exterminating was being subverted by permissive social practices, which he also perceived as analogous to the threat of contagious diseases. Like many of his contemporaries, he was a great admirer of the composer Richard Wagner, especially his elaborate operas, which combined different arts (music , theatre, literature and visual art) into a harmonious single event, for which Wagner used the term Gesamtkunstwerk (German for "total work of art"). Surprisingly, this film does not mention that famous word, although it was widely and commonly used by turn-of-the-century architects and designers, among them Henry van de Velde, Peter Behrens, Josef Hoffmann, and Frank Lloyd Wright (who called it "organic form"). In those days, when the finest architects were asked to design a building, they were likely to refuse to make only the rudiementary shape or shell. Instead, they tended to design the entire building (much as William Morris did with (at least) the interior of his own residence, Red House), to make it consistent by also designing the furniture, the fittings, the dinnerware, and, in some cases, even the ideal clothes to be worn by the building's residents. This was taken one step further in 1899 when Josef Maria Olbrich was invited to design (as a deliberate Gesamtkunstwerk) the setting and most of the houses for an artists' colony in Darmstadt, Germany. This film does not mention that colony, but it does say that, as Chancellor, Hitler began to imagine himself as the set designer, director and leading actor (or perhaps what designers now commonly call the "corporate designer") of a colossal Wagnerian opera called the Third Reich, for which he really did design certain uniforms, flags, standards and buildings. It also claims that, in addition to Hitler, at least half of his leading officials had direct and significant links to the arts. Those artistic involvements were not incidental, the film argues, because the Third Reich was in certain ways an aesthetic movement—a perversely misguided attempt to improve the world for the German Volk, and to reunite art with everyday life.—RB more>>>

Dard Hunter | Graphic Work

Above Dard Hunter self-portrait, from an advertisement for The Dard Hunter School of Handicraft in The Caxton: A Magazine for Quality Folks No 2 Vol II (November 1910).

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A new book has just come out about the American artist, craftsman and papermaker William Joseph (Dard) Hunter (1883-1966). The title is Dard Hunter: The Graphic Works by Lawrence Kreisman (Petaluma CA: Pomegranate, 2012). While it does provide information about his participation in the Roycroft Workshops in East Aurora NY (founded by Elbert Hubbard) and his contacts with the Wiener Werkstatte in Vienna (including some wonderful photographs that I haven't seen elsewhere), it isn't so much a biography as a rich, full-color portfolio of his Arts and Crafts designs for books, bookplates, typographic lettering, advertising brochures, and stained glass windows.

Among the many things he made while living at East Aurora was an ornate title spread for Hubbard's book White Hyacinths (1907), which was subsequently used for two other Roycroft books, The Tale of Two Tailors (1909) and Pig-Pen Pete (1914). more>>> 

WPA Artist | Orr C. Fisher

Back in 1999, we published an essay (now online) about the painted murals that were made for US post offices in the 1930s and 40s as part of a government program called the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Among our favorites is an oil on canvas mural made in 1941 by Iowa-born artist Orr C(leveland) Fisher (1885-1974), titled The Corn Parade (reproduced above). It was commissioned to hang in the lobby of the new post office in Mount Ayr IA (and is apparently still there, assuming it hasn't closed), the seat of Ringgold Country in south central Iowa. (In an earlier post, we noted that Jackson Pollock's mother was born near Mount Ayr, and his father was also from Ringgold County.) As a WPA artist, Fisher also painted a mural for the post office in Forest City IA, titled Evening on the Farm (1942).

Fisher was originally from Ringgold County, having grown up near Delphos (originally named Borneo). According to online information (submitted by the artist's niece, Donna L. Howard) at a website on WPA murals, he studied art through correspondence schools, and (in 1913 and 1921) with Charles A. Cumming at the Cumming School of Art in Des Moines. While in Des Moines, he also studied at Drake University and worked with J.N. "Ding" Darling, the famous political cartoonist for the Des Moines Register. 

In an autobiographical article in 1930, as quoted in his niece's article, Fisher described his interest in art—

At an early age, yet in the primary department of a country school, I exhibited a talent for drawing by making pictures on my slate during the study period and on the blackboard at recesses and the noon hour. The barn doors, granary walls and every place on the old homestead where a smooth surface appeared was a temptation too strong to resist the markings of my pencil or chalk. Hence everything on the old farm was either decorated with comics or carved with knife in crude designs and initials. I use to draw with my finger in the plow furrow where the over-turned sod presented a smooth surface. On the way to school I would dig from the clay hills red and yellow soft rocks to color my pictures at school. This was before I knew what a crayola was.

He went on to say that "everywhere I have gone, I have drawn. I have drawn almost everything imaginable up to the modern art era, except a salary." Aside from being an artist, he worked for the railroad, drove a six-horse freight wagon, and produced articles, cartoons and illustrations for various publications. He was also an erstwhile inventor, and in 1904 (at age 19) he received a US Patent (No. 759,257) for an Automatic Whistle Operating Mechanism for locomotives (see patent diagram below). 

In later years, he lived in Woodstock NY, where he built a studio. In the 1960s, he moved to California, where he died in Fresno in 1974.

The Wonderful Woman I Live With

Mary Snyder Behrens on Etsy

Dean Schwarz at Blanden Art Museum

The Blanden Memorial Art Museum, founded in 1931, is housed in a historic neoclassical building in the Oak Hill District of Fort Dodge IA. It was the first permanent art facility in the state. Opening there a week from today will be an exhibition of the paintings and pottery of Dean Schwarz, co-founder of South Bear Pottery and South Bear Press in Decorah IA. There is a talk by the artist at 3:00 pm (Saturday, April 21), followed by a reception at 4:00–5:00 pm. The exhibition continues until September 15. Schwarz's pottery is produced in collaboration with his son, Gunnar Schwarz, who makes the large wheel-thrown pots which Dean designs the surfaces of.

In connection with the exhibition, the museum has published a large format full-color catalog titled Dean Schwarz: Pottery, Painting and Persistence, 1958-2011 (see cover above). The catalog essay was written by Margaret Skove. It was designed by Lynette Ubel, with photographs by Peter Lee, Harry Baumert, and Jerry Grier.

This is an extraordinarily rich publication, featuring 112 pages of text and breathtaking photographs, with 105 reproductions in all, two of which are shown below. It is priced at only $35 (for museum members) and $40 (for non-members) and is available at the museum's gift shop. Or it can also be ordered by mail, with a $6 shipping and handling charge. Make checks payable to Blanden Charitable Foundation, and send to the Blanden Memorial Art Museum, 920 3rd Avenue South, Fort Dodge IA 50501. Please include a correct mailing address and phone number for reference. >>more…

Dean Schwarz©, Barn Poppies

Dean Schwarz©, Silos

Howard's End

Chain carved from a single piece of wood

Growing up in the Midwest in the 1950s, when I was in elementary school I spent a lot of hours, especially in the summer, sitting outside in the shade on a concrete slab, carving shapes out of wood with my aging next door neighbor, Howard Steele (he looked like J.C. Penney to me). Recently, when I found the above photograph in a turn-of-the-century issue of the Strand Magazine (c1890s), it reminded me of Howard's specialty: He was good at "whittling" wooden chains out of a single scrap of pine, a trick that was pretty amazing to me at that age. He gave me my first pocket knife, which I used when I was whittling with him. Later, when I was in fifth grade, I took up ventriloquism. My sister gave me the head of a discarded doll, which I modified so that the mouth would open and close. One day when I came home from school, I was surprised and delighted to find that Howard had carved an entire wooden body for my makeshift sidekick, and my mother and a seamstress friend had made an appropriate miniature suit. I named him Mitch Mahoney, because he was supposed to resemble television bandleader Mitch Miller. It must have been the following year that, as I again walked home from school, I noticed as I neared my home that perhaps a dozen neighborhood women (my mother among them) were gathered on the lawn in front of Howard's house. As I approached, it became apparent that Howard, lifeless and propped up on a chair in the grass in the yard, was having a terrible hemorrhage, and the women were frantically trying to stop the bleeding with towels. After Howard died that day, I was given his pocket knife, which I still have, along with the one that he'd given to me. Oddly, now that all the years have passed, I can no longer remember which pocket knife was his—and which was mine.

Étienne-Jules Marey's 3-D Motion Picture

Without hesitation, one of my favorite people from the past was a 19th-century French scientist named Étienne Jules-Marey (1830-1904). The number and complexity of the things that he invented are almost beyond belief. He began to study animal movement in the late 1860s, then used photography and a photographic gun to record successive stages in the movements of a wide range of animals and of humans. By far, my favorite invention of his (shown here) was very likely the first 3-D motion picture device. Using a spinning drum-like motion picture toy called a zoetrope, he arranged inside of it (on upright wires) a series of tiny wax sculptures of ten stages in the flight of a seagull. By spinning the drum, while bending down and looking through the slits in its side, one could see the breathtaking illusion of a tiny three-dimensional bird, flying through the air. I wonder if this still exists, or if it could be rebuilt. More>>>

Sandburg's Story of Fingers and Forks

Roy R. Behrens, COOK BOOK: Gertrude Stein, William Cook, and Le Corbusier ©

From Carl Sandburg, Always the Young Strangers. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1953, p. 167—

A NORWEGIAN told me his mother sent him to a store to get something and he came home saying he forgot what she sent him for. She sent him again with the words, "What you don't keep in your head your feet must make up for, my little man." When he ate with his fingers and his grandmother told him to eat with his fork, he said, "Fingers were made before forks," and she cornered him, "But not your fingers."

You Can Kiss My Foot

Art Deco-era poster, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

From Bruce Siberts, in Walker D. Wyman, ed., Nothing But Prairie and Sky: Life of the Dakota Range in the Early Days. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954, pp. 5-6.—

Our family were strict Methodists, attended church regular, and none of them ever got drunk, chewed or smoked tobacco, or used bad language. Only Uncle Ed, who bought cattle and hogs for the Chicago market, was different. He chewed tobacco, was suspected of drinking beer once, and had the reputation of seeing a show in Chicago called The Black Crook, in which women wore tights. As Uncle Ed and Mr. Crum, a neighbor, were the only Methodists who used tobacco, except on the sly, it was urged that they be expelled from the church. But looking over the records, it was learned that they were the best in paying money for the support of the church so they were allowed to remain in good standing. However, the minister preached a good sermon on the evils of tobacco, saying "There you sit with hell juice running out of your mouths," and on in that line for two hours. Uncle Ed said that the preacher could kiss his foot and go to hell. Only he didn't say foot.

Stuarte Cloete on the Phases of Life

Art Deco-era poster. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs.

From Stuart Cloete, A Victorian Son. New York: John Day Company, 1972, p. 15—

The first twenty years of anyone's life are more or less spent in growing up, not that a human being is developed or fully matured by then, but it is an approximation. The next twenty years in the life of a man or a woman are the period which is dominated by the sexual urge. Biologically speaking, at forty, both men and women can be and often are grandparents. Sex may continue to manifest itself till an advanced age but the fury has gone out of it…This is the period of maturity. Success has either been achieved or not achieved by forty. The ladder must, by this time, be at least partially climbed. After sixty comes the last period of life—the evening, where thought and memory replace action. Where a man not only puts his material affairs in order but tries to sort out his life, to evaluate his failures and successes. Where, with sufficient perspective, he can at last begin to see the wood without being confused by the trees.

Stravinsky on the Telephone

Above Separated at birth? (Left to right) German architect Peter Behrens (in a portrait by Max Liebermann, 1911), and designer Roy R. Behrens.

Below From Robert Craft, Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship. Nashville TN: Vanderbilt University (1994), p. 188—

I.S [Stravinsky], telephoning the G. Wittenberg Surgical Appliances Company: "This is Mr. Stravinsky, S-T-R-A-" He spells it out loudly and deliberately, as he does when dictating a telegram. "Two years ago you fitted me with a truss. I want an appointment to have it repaired." He has dialed a wrong number, however, and the other party has apparently had to hear the entire speech without finding an opportunity to interrupt. I.S. ill-humoredly cradles the receiver, then carefully dials again. "This is Mr. Stravinsky, S-T-…" You made a …" The same party answers, very annoyed. Annoyed now himself, I.S. double-checks the number in his address book, finds it correct, still believes he has misdialed, tries again. "This is Mr.…" This time the man on the other end, no doubt believing himself the victim of a raving lunatic, slams down the receiver. At this point V. [Stravinsky's wife] discovers from the telephone directory that I.S. has miscopied the number.

Jackson Pollock's Iowa Roots

 © Les Coleman, Pollock's Palette (1972). Household paint on hardboard. Photo: Colin Sackett.

From Henry Adams, Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock. NY: Bloomsbury Press, 2009, pp. 22-23—

[Jackson] Pollock's mother, Stella McClure, the eldest child in her family, was born on May 20, 1875, in a log house near the little town of Mount Ayr, Iowa. Her parents were stern Presbyterians who believed that there was just one straight and narrow path to salvation. Life on the McClure farm was harsh and strictly regulated, and misfortunes, which came frequently, were accepted with a kind of stoic resignation. One of Stella's sisters died of convulsions in her arms; another died young of tuberculosis. Around 1890 the farm failed, and the family moved to Tingley, Iowa, where her father, John McClure, found work as a brick-mason and plasterer…

The background of Jackson Pollock's father was, if possible, even grimmer than that of his mother. Two years younger than his wife, Roy Pollock was born to the name of LeRoy McCoy on February 25, 1877, on a small farm in Ringgold County, Iowa. In 1879, when LeRoy was two, his mother and sister both died of tuberculosis. Despairing and destitute, John McCoy gave away his infant son to James and Lizzie Pollock, a poor farm couple in Tingley who were not his relatives.

Les Coleman | More of Les

Les Coleman © Trispectacles (1995). Photo by Nancy Fouts.

More from British artist Les Coleman—

Ventriloquists drink gottled geer.

There is no future in being a clairvoyant.

You can be sure that if it's in small print, it should be in large print.

The dice had never learned how to count beyond six.

Terror struck at the very heart of his epiglottis.

The smell was blinding.

Please refrain from prohibiting.

Seaside holidays should be seen as a last resort.

Audience tells stand up comedian to sit down.

The autobiography of a ghost writer.

They sawed the magician's coffin in half before lowering it into the ground.

Reading his own obituary caused him to have a heart attack.

He had all the symptoms of hypochondria.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith use a false name when signing the hotel register.

Copyright © by Les Coleman. Used by permission.

Mary Snyder Behrens | American Canvas

Above (top to bottom) © Mary Snyder Behrens, American Canvas II, III and IV (2002). Mixed media on board. Each measures 48h x 30w x 4d inches.

THIS SERIES, called American Canvas, began in 2002. It is a sequence of canvas-less "paintings" that are comprised of discarded maps, law book and hymnal pages, stuck to dried latex house paint. These form the ground on which painting and pencil and other various markings are applied… >>more

Cubist Food

A cartoon by Frank King (April 1913), making fun of cubist art.

James Elkins in Why Art Cannot Be Taught. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001, p. 68—

Art school catalogs from the turn of the century are filled with reproductions of student paintings that look like slavish copies of John Singer Sargent or Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and exhibition catalogs from the 1950s show hundreds of students' works that emulate abstract expressionism. The lesson I draw from looking at older art school catalogs and graduation exhibitions is that fifty years from now even the most diverse-looking work will begin to seem quite homogenous. Works that seemed new or promising will fade into what they really are: average works, mediocre attempts to emulate the styles of the day. That's depressing, I know: but it's what history teaches us.

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Joshua Fineberg in Classical Music: Why Bother?: Hearing the World of Contemporary Culture Through a Composer's Ear. London: Routledge, 2006—

Most art is crap. This may be a shocking idea to many people. We think of art as the great masterworks we know, and it's very easy to forget the mountains of mediocrity that were sifted to lift Bach or Dante or Emily Dickinson to their Olympian heights.

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Alan Fletcher in The Art of Looking Sideways. Phaidon Press, 2001—

I made my weekly telephone call to my mother. "What have you been up to this week?" she asked—as usual. "Nothing much," I responded—as usual. Then adventurously said, "I've been putting a book together." "Oh, what's it about," she queried—with vague interest. My mother wasn't into reading, she equated it with working. "Well," I improvised, "it's about seeing." "Oh, I see"—she said. Then changed the subject. "Are you looking forward to going on holiday next week?"

Identical Twin Cities

John Page, Together Now (2011). Collage on canvas, 34 x 40 in.

Trevor Fishlock, in Americans and Nothing Else. Cassell (1980)—

Minneapolis and St Paul..are nicknamed the Twin Cities. They are divided by the Mississippi River, and united by the belief that the inhabitants on the other side of the river are inferior.

...

Harrison Salisbury, in Chester G. Anderson, ed., Growing Up in Minnesota. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976—

Once [after he moved to New York], on top of the Woolworth Building (the Empire State Building did not yet exist), a man asked my mother what it was that lay beyond the Hudson. She said New Jersey. "Oh, yes," he said. "Well, I've never been west of the Hudson." How to explain Minnesota—not only west of the Hudson but west of the Mississippi? It was not easy. New Yorkers didn't seem to understand the difference between Minneapolis and Indianapolis. And even when I explained they didn't seem to think it really made a difference. I knew that New Yorkers were very sophisticated people. In fact, I was ashamed of coming from a place out west where, as I understood the New York view, no one really lived and certainly no one from New York ever ventured.

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Art Buchwald, More Caviar. New York: Harper, 1959—

Brno is a vry nce cty, but we ddn't get a chance to spnd mch tme thre... Thre are mny twns in Czechoslovakia wthout vwels, but Brno is the lrgest one of thm all.

David Meyer | On Ernie Summers

Coles Phillips, Know All Men by These Presents (c1910). Library of Congress.

The following passages are from David Meyer's memoir of his friend Ernest Summers, in Ernie and Me (c2003)—

His antics in restaurants were always entertaining. "As Shakespeare once said, 'What foods these morsels be!'" was his usual comment when a meal was served... He would scoop up unused silverware into his coat sleeves and let it spill out again as he was paying for the meal. He was never rude to waiters, but he often confounded them. He kept a stack of freshly minted one-dollar bills glued together at one end so they appeared to be a pad of paper. As Ernie tore off singles to pay a bill, the expressions on the faces of the wait staff or cashiers were wonderful to watch. Decades before the advent of portable cell phones, he carried a phone receiver with a cord attached to the inside of his suit coat. A ringing device was in his pocket. We would be in a restaurant and as the waitress was taking the order, Ernie would have the phone "ring." He'd reach into his coat, pull out the receiver and put it to his ear. After saying "Hello" and "Hold on," he would hand it to the waitress and say, "It's for you." No one I saw who was given that fake phone ever hesitated saying "Hello" into its receiver.

...

On our first introduction he asked me how old I was.

"Seven," I think I told him.

"D'you know how old I was when I was your age?" he asked.

"No."

"I was eight."

It wasn't only waiters Ernie confounded; children were included.

"If S-O-U-P spells 'soup,'" he'd say, "What does G-O-U-P spell?"

"Goop?"

"No... 'Go up,'" he'd reply.

He'd also show how he had eleven fingers. "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six," he's say, counting backwards, "and five on this hand makes eleven."

Early on he gave me a piece of advice which I have never forgotten:

He who takes what isn't his'n,

Pays a fine or goes to prison.

I've Got A Room in Chicago

Canadian Pacific Railway (1940s)

Anon: I've got a room in Chicago, and she's got a flat behind.

Francois Rabelais: Nature abhors a vacuum.

Tennessee Williams: A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.

Charles Bragg: Nature abhors a vacuum cleaner salesman.

Anon: Hey. Pop! Vot is a vacuum?

—A vacuum is a void.

—I know it's a void, but vat does dat void mean?

Anon: Sorry about my dancing. I'm a little stiff from badminton.

—I don't care where you're from. You'll never dance with me again.

Henry Moore: [Before getting married] I had argued with all my friends that really artists shouldn't get married, they should be married to their art. After all Michelangelo wasn't married, Beethoven wasn't married and so on, all the examples of really good artists who weren't married; but after meeting Irina [his future wife], I began to say Rembrandt was married, Bach had twenty children and so on. All this attitude changed, and within six months we were married.

Finnegans Wake | James Joyce

Roy R. Behrens © Combat Fatigue. Digital montage (2004).

When I initially made this digital montage—in a form that alludes to a book spread—it had nothing to do with the Irish novelist and poet James Joyce (1882-1941), at least not directly. In fact, the obscured image on the right is reworked from a photograph (in the Library of Congress) of an equally admired writer and Joyce's contemporary, the Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats (1865-1939). But it had everything to do with writing and designing. Years earlier, when I was in an architecture class in graduate school (the only one I've taken), I began to think about Venn diagrams in relation to figure-ground patterns, and then, by extension, to architectural building plans. In part I was led to this by the writings of Christopher Alexander. It seemed to me then that one can make purposeful "category confusions" (puns, rhymes, parodies, allusions and so on) in architectural building plans as easily as one can with words. I was "reading" Finnegans Wake at the time, so to some extent this came to me because of their concurrence.

Not to pretend to explain Joyce's comic novel, its two central characters are HCE (Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker) and ALP (Anna Livia Plurabelle). Beyond that, you can find a detailed and reasonably good summary at the Wikipedia article on the book. For the moment, I would simply like to share a few examples of the astonishing word play that Joyce employs throughout the book.

He frequently offers sentences that say one thing and yet, by the way they are written, they echo (or parody) other famous passages, especially religious texts. Listen to these two examples:

"In the name of Annah the Allmaziful, the Everliving, the Bringer of Plurabilities, haloed be her eve, her singitime sung, her rill be run, unhemmed as it is uneven!"

"Wharnow are alle her childer, say? In kingdome gone or power to come or gloria be to them farther? Allalivial, allaluvial! Some here, more no more, more again lost alla stranger."

The complexity of the patterns he makes is beyond belief. Here's a particularly interesting part in which he poses a question, then follows with an answer:

"8. And how war yore maggies?

Answer: They war loving, they love laughing, they laugh weeping, they weep smelling, they smell smiling, they smile hating, they hate thinking, they think feeling, they feel tempting, they tempt daring, they dare waiting, they wait taking, they take thanking, they thank seeking, as born for lorn in lore of love to live and wive by wile and rile by rule of ruse 'reathed rose and hose hol'd home, yeth cometh elope year, coach and four, Sweet Peck-at-my-Heart picks one man more."

Finally, I don't know how many people realize that, throughout this astonishing book, Joyce has embedded word sequences—words that begin with h, c and e—to allude of course to HCE (the protagonist). There are tons of them, but here a few:

"Howth Castle and Environs. he calmly extensolies. Hic cubat edilus. How Copenhagen ended. happinest childher everwere. Hush! Caution! Echoland! How charmingly exquisite! human, erring and condonable. heptagon crystal emprisoms. Heave, coves, emptybloddy! Hengler's Circus Entertainment. Heinz cans everywhere."

Priestly Curators

Mary Snyder Behrens, American Canvas Series, mixed media, 4" w x 5.5" h

British artist-writer Patrick Hughes, from the essay "A Bit of Artobiography," in the catalog of his recent exhibition at Flowers Galleries in London, titled Patrick Hughes: Fifty Years in Show Business 1961-2011—

"The museum of art has replaced the church for popular devotion, and so the curator is the new priest. The priestly curator's job is to introduce new mysteries and moralities to the impressionable public, backed up by spectacle and verbiage.

My art has always appealed directly to the people, calling out over the heads of the priests straight to the congregation, doing the vicars and bishops of official art out of a job. I am an unbeliever. I do not speak in tongues. Thus officialdom ignores me. I like to think that art is a lingua franca which can be understood by all the inhabitants of the planet. The idea of Korean art or New Zealand art or Polish art or Nicaraguan art or Californian art or Kenyan art is anathema to me. Writers may be stuck in their languages, but we artists can be seen and understood by all."

Les Coleman | Just Thunking

Whatever can be said about British artist and writer Les Coleman (whose work we have followed for decades), he is not thoughtless.

He thunks, he unthunks—and now in his latest book, he's been having afterthunks. It's called (appropriately) Afterthunks (Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Boekie Woekie, 2011. ISBN 978-90-78191-25-4). Above is a scan of the cover, as beautifully designed as are the interior pages by Colin Sackett. Some of Coleman's other books are available here at the same publisher's website (scroll down the page to find his name). Like many of his earlier publications, this is a book of his puzzling aphorisms (his thunks), ever so wonderfully interspersed with his equally "doubletake" drawings (one of which is shown below). As for the verbal thunks themselves, here are some teasing samples of those:

A triple-edged sword.

What is it about rag that makes a bull see red?

Houdini spent his life escaping from himself.

Terrified of shooting himself in the foot, he had both feet amputated.

"How the Electric Chair Saved Me From the Firing Squad"

As I have myself have always said, Les is more.

Sirloin Steak and Whiskey

Mary Snyder Behrens, Trammel: White Wish III (2005) ©

From James Webb Young, The Diary of an Ad Man: The War Years, June 1, 1942-December 31, 1943 (Chicago: Advertising Publications, 1944)—

"Talked with domestic science editor of one of the women's magazines. She told me that she had tested literally thousands of recipes, covering almost every kind of food. Asked her what, after all this, she considered the best eating. She thought it was pretty hard to beat a good sirloin steak, washed down with straight whiskey. Western gal."

Wright's City National Bank & Park Inn

Frank Lloyd Wright, City National Bank (restored)

Park Inn (restored)

RECENTLY WE were delighted to see the restored exteriors of the City National Bank and Park Inn Hotel, two adjacent buildings in downtown Mason City, Iowa. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1908, and completed in 1910, these are famous, influential works that are said to have influenced young European architects of that era, and to have contributed to Wright's own subsequent designs for the Midway Gardens and the Imperial Hotel. The interiors have also been fully restored, and the hotel is once again accepting room reservations. For detailed information, click here.

Packin' Cats for the Army | Geraldine Schwarz

US aviator John B. Moisant and his cat (1910)

PICTURED ABOVE are American pioneer aviator John B. Moisant (1868-1910) and his tabby cat companion (who often flew with him), variously known as Mademoiselle Fifi, Paree or Spark Plug. Moisant died in a fatal crash in 1910, but the cat lived on and, in the bottom photo, is dressed in appropriate mourning attire and poised in a basket at his funeral.

This reminds me of a new book by Iowa author Geraldine Schwarz, titled Packin' Cats for the Arrr-mee: Fun on the Farm in the 'Forties, a delightfully rich and vivid memoir about growing up with her brother (John Robert Fromm) on a farm near Mason City, Iowa, during World War II. Here's how it opens—

We were very-very good to our cats—always thinking what we could do to make them more comfortable, to make them happy, to keep them entertained. On cold winter mornings, we liked to have "cat warmings" because we knew the cats would be warmer if they curled up together. We got them all in the woodhouse and made a good spot in the corncobs where they could all sleep. But they didn't stay together very well. The tomcats fought with each other, and most of the others had better things to do. So we tried stuffing them in a cardboard box and folding the lid closed. 

Our work always had to be accompanied with a slogan or a song, so pretty soon we were singing, "We're PACK-in' cats for the ARRR-mee." The cats didn't have the same commitment to the war effort as we did—they were not as patriotic. After they had been crammed in the box and escaped a couple times, they really didn't want to stay there no matter how cozy it was. It was kind of hard to catch them again. If they got over the wall between the wood-and-cob part to the coal bin, we gave up on them and settled for any cats we could push in and closed the lid. Then one skinny head would come poking through the little opening and we'd have to start "PACK-in' cats for the ARRR-mee" all over again!

It's a wonderful book, replete with snapshots ("you-are-there") and scans of actual remnants from her childhood (including, for example, an account ledger of all the cats on the property), Schwarz's narrative is so fluid and so disarmingly conversational that, once you begin reading, it's hard to take a break—for fear of possibly missing out.

Here is the author's synopsis, as quoted from the dust jacket—

Packin' cats was never easy. They didn't like to be pushed into boxes even if it was for their own good. But if it had been easy, it wouldn't have been fun. It would have been "play," and that was what city kids did. We always thought of everything we did around the farm as "work." We liked to be useful, to be helpful…especially to cats and all our other livestock.

We had a great life on the farm—and that's not from the perspective of a grown-up looking back on a distant childhood. We knew it was great even while we were kids. And we were never bored—we found hundreds of ways to have fun.

Our folks loved the farm, so we did, too. The farm belonged to us and we belonged to it. We depended on each other and took care of each other. It was sometimes tough, but it was such a good life.

Jacquie Colvin, jacket and book design

Here are the bibliographic details: Packin' Cats for the Arrr-meee: Fun on the Farm in the 'Forties, by Deanie and Johnnie, also known as Geraldine Fromm Schwarz and John Robert Fromm. Book design by Jacquie Colvin. Decorah IA: South Bear Press, 2011. 167 pp. 52 black and white photos. 29 color photos. Clothbound. First edition $25.00. ISBN 978-0-9761381-9-8. Library of Congress Control Number 2011909978. Available from South Bear Press, 2248 South Bear Road, Decorah IA 52101. Website www.southbearpress.org.

Ventriloquism for Dummies

Howdy Doody Patent No 156,687 (1950)

In the late 18th century, a British entertainer named James Burns, known as "Shelford Tommy," persuaded a freight carrier to empty his wagon in order to search for a child whose cries for help seemed to be coming from inside the load he was hauling.

During the same period, when a York shoemaker was accused by fifty witnesses of having tossed a crying baby into the river, he defined himself in court by producing a second crying baby, which he then shockingly beheaded—but which, upon closer inspection, was shown to be only an inanimate doll.

Both Burns and the shoemaker were experts at ventriloquism, the act of making it seem that a voice or other sound has emanated not from ones own larynx, but from some other adjacent entity. A person who does this professionally is called a ventriloquist or "belly speaker," a coinage that comes from the merger of two Latin words, venter (belly) and loqui (to speak). More

John Page | American Artist

Artworks © John Page

For more than thirty years, printmaker and painter John Page (1923-) was on the faculty at the University of Northern Iowa. He retired in 1988, and he and his wife Mary Lou moved to a retirement community in Arizona. Above are two of my favorite works from the hundreds he produced over a long (and on-going) artistic career. As a graphic designer, I am inevitably drawn to images not so much for the story they tell—but because they tell it well. The top image is a monoprint of a reclining nude, completed by John in 1980. I find it breathtaking when an artwork teeters on the line between structural perfection and gestural spontaneity; surely, this print does just that. The lower image is one of twenty small colored etchings (called the River Series) that John made in the summer of 1966. They are based on on-site drawings of seemingly insignificant scenes along the Cedar River, in the vicinity of Cedar Falls, Iowa (where the university is located). Again, while I surely relate to the story that's told, I am even more deeply astonished by the rhythmic perfection ("the exact words in the right order") that makes it an even more beautiful poem. In recent years, still living in the Southwest, John has turned to small, abstract watercolors, and, at the moment (October thru December 2011), some of these are being shown at the Posada Java in Green Valley AZ.

Cynical Girl

Roy R. Behrens, logo for an online business shop called Cynical Girl (2011). 

Apple Charlotte Logo

Roy R. Behrens, logo for a vintage online shop

Theatre Poster

© Roy R. Behrens, Theatre Poster Design (2011)

Kultur Vultur

Remains of our barn and a vulture on July 11, 2011

This is what our barn looked like on the morning of July 11, as we walked out to take stock of the damage from a huge derecho windstorm that came through without warning at 4:30 in the morning. There was no tornado siren since, of course, it's not a tornado, just a massive straight wind, this one peaking at a speed of 130 mph. Preoccupied with cleaning up, there's not much time for blogging now. That morning, as we stumbled out in disbelief, a vulture landed on the barn, perhaps an indication that we weren't moving fast enough. I am reminded of Gertrude Stein's remark about Oakland CA: That "when you get there, there is no there there." So it is with our farm. Equally suitable may be Bobby Dylan's line: "I ain't workin' on Mary's farm no more" (simply because it no longer exists).

Costumes as Performance & Activism

Roy R. Behrens, Poster Design (detail), 2011

There is such enormous satisfaction in the process of graphic design, especially when a client is clear about the focus of an event (or product or whatever), budget restrictions, and so on—and thereafter it's left to my judgment. A good example recently is this logo-like title image I made for an upcoming symposium (lectures, exhibits, performances) on Costumes as Performance and Activism, sponsored by the University of Northern Iowa Arts Consortium and the Costume Society of America Midwest Region, on October 14-15, 2011. And of course it's the same kind of pleasure that designers of costumes and clothing enjoy.

Walter Hamady | The Gabberjabbs

Years ago, a friend of Walter Hamady said (as Hamady himself recalls), "right in front of my mother, 'Walter, you are a bastard!' And my dear sweet mother pulled up bigger than life-size and with huffy indignation said, 'He is not a bastard! I know who his father was and we were married at the time!" more>>

More Than A Few Least Favorite Things

The likes and many dislikes of Inez McAlister Faber in Out Here on Soap Creek (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1982), pp. 23-24—

Probably many people wiser than I dislike some of the things I like, such as hoeing, canning, cleaning house, cutting corn fodder, living in the country, being in my thirties, dahlias, roses, meals on time, empty houses with flowers still growing in the yards, old furniture, small boys, books, newspaper editorials, astronomy, chickens, dogs, cows, horses, meat or gravy cooked in a cast-iron skillet, waffles, carrots and spinach. It is quite likely that others, and I have no quarrel with them, like many of the things I hate, including petunias, cats, children who have been taught that they are cute, grown-ups who try to act kiddish, male or female sissies, superiority complexes, machine hemstitching, tablecloths hemmed on the machine, cows with horns, weedy gardens, dwelling houses painted green, rain on washday, so-called living rooms that are only used for company, and overstuffed davenports. Large women in striped or checked dresses, bad table manners, being flatly contradicted, people who handle books roughly or who lay an open book face down upon a table, people who read over my shoulder, inquisitiveness, concrete walks in front of farm homes, fried parsnips, mashed potatoes, interruptions while ironing, washing milk pails, cleaning muddy overshoes, cooking for visitors who do not come, going to bed, getting up, washing yesterdays dishes, and talking over the telephone.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Damaged Wings

Death's Head Moth

 

Ernest Hemingway describes F. Scott Fitzgerald as follows in A Moveable Feast (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1964)—

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly anymore because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.

Not Truss Worthy | Edward Marsh

Edward Marsh, Ambrosia and Small Beer (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1965), p. 220—

A soldier up for medical exam proved to have been wearing a truss for the last 6 years, and was classified as P.E. or Permanently Exempt. On his way out he gave this news to his pal, who immediately asked for the loan of the truss, which was granted. The examiner asked how long he had been wearing it, and he said, "Six years," whereupon he was classified as M.E. "What's that?" he asked. "Middle East." "How can I go to the Middle East when I've been wearing a truss for 6 years?" "If you can wear a truss for 6 years upside-down, you can jolly well ride a camel for 6 months."

Get To Work | Richard Hugo

 Fine advice from poet Richard Hugo in The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing (New York: W.W. Norton, 1979)—

Lucky accidents seldom happen to writers who don't work. You will find that you may rewrite and rewrite a poem and it never seems quite right. Then a much better poem may come rather fast and you wonder why you bothered with all that work on the earlier poem. Actually, the hard work you do on one poem is put in on all poems. The hard work on the first poem is responsible for the sudden ease of the second. If you just sit around waiting for the easy ones, nothing will come. Get to work.

Eddie Marsh Meets H.M. Stanley

Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1872), with Kalulu, his adopted son

A couple of times in my life, when I first met in person someone who I had been wanting to meet for years, I became suddenly, atypically tongue-tied. As Edward Marsh describes in his memoir A Number of People (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1939), he had the same experience when he first met the famous journalist and explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley (as in "Doctor Livingston, I presume") at a party (p. 41)—

At a party of old Mrs. Tennant's he [Stanley] crossed the room to where I was standing forlorn, and said: "I see you're looking neglected, so I've come to talk to you." This well-meant gambit completely froze the genial current of my soul, and neither of us could think of anything further to say.

Implicitness, Closure and Flow | Csikszentmihalyi

Diagram © Roy R. Behrens (2011)

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. NY: Harper and Row, 1990, p. 53—

Whenever I took our hunting dog, Hussar, for a walk in the open fields he liked to play a very simple game—the prototype of the most culturally widespread game of human children, escape and pursuit. He would run circles around me at top speed, with his tongue hanging out and his eyes warily watching every move I made, daring me to catch him. Occasionally I would take a lunge, and if I was lucky I got to touch him. Now the interesting part is that whenever I was tired, and moved half-heartedly, Hussar would run much tighter circles, making it relatively easy for me to catch him; on the other hand, if I was in good shape and willing to extend myself, he would enlarge the diameter of his circle. In this way, the difficulty of the game was kept contant. With an uncanny sense for the fine balancings of challenges and skills, he would make sure that the game would yield the maximum enjoyment for us both.

[Compare Arthur Koestler's contention (in The Act of Creation) that the value of cryptic communication "is not to obscure the message, but to make it more luminous by compelling the recipient to work it out for himself—to re-create it."]