Paintings in the New Year

Posted on January 6, 2011 by fsdthreshold

The new year began with two more paintings. These were done in four days: the first on January 1-2, and the second on January 3-4.

So here we go. The first is called The Hungry Hills.

Fairly bizarre, huh? As with stories, I often don’t know how a painting is going to end when I start it. I would even say usually there’s something I discover along the way that gives the picture its real focus. With this one, I set out to paint a fantasy landscape. I knew I wanted it to have caves, stairs, and a central chasm (because I liked those parts of the Balrog painting — see previous post).

The Hungry Hills

 

The Hungry Hills -- gray daylight shot

As I worked, I wasn’t happy with the painting at all. It had no theme, no central focus, nothing that interested me, and it didn’t even seem to be underground as I’d intended. Then I thought, “Hey! Those caves with their white stalactites look like mouths with teeth!”

The Hungry Hills -- a sunlight shot like the first

In this one, although you still can’t see quite to the bottom of the canvas, you can glimpse the stairway inside the mouth of the very lowest figure.

So then I realized that the cave areas should be faces, and they should have eyes and, in some cases, noses. At that point, I started liking the painting.

Detail

The face in the top right corner looks fish-like to me. I’m reminded of Dagon, who appears in the Old Testament as a god of the Philistines, and who may have been a god of the sea. He is also featured in the horror tales of H.P. Lovecraft.

The cavern beneath him, with the red eyes, looks just plain evil. If the top figure is Dagon, I would name this red-eyed fellow “Malev.”

Did you notice the winding stairway on that tower in the top center?

The top left figure has no eyes. He’s a blind hungry hill. The tree-faced tower next to him is wild-eyed, howling and mad, but probably not as dangerous as most of the other caverns.

The cavern beneath them on the left I call “Bomarzo.” Who or what is the gargoyle-like figure who seems to be gazing down at our heroine? Are his intentions good or ill?

A dark journey through the hills

Would you believe that putting in our heroine was a last-minute inspiration? It seemed to me that the hungry hills were all watching, waiting . . . their attention seemed focused inward on someone journeying among them. Then it hit me — of course! Someone is on that stairway! Someone is alone, and courageous, venturing into these hills on a quest!

I don’t have a name for the deep green one in the abyss, though he’s the one whose gaze told me exactly where our heroine was.

The face with a stairway where his ear should be looks Mayan to me, or maybe like a Kachina doll of the Hopis. He has two stairways in his gullet, climbing in two directions. The figure above him looks very cobra-like. I guess that’s Nagaina (remember Riki-Tiki-Tavi?).

Nag and the Lamia

Over here on the right are Nag and beneath him Lamia. Do you see the face on the wall of the chasm? It’s the only figure with a closed mouth. I think that because of its position, no one can possibly pass into it; no path leads there. So this hungry face has to draw its nourishment from the entire hill country of which it is a part. It’s a bored, resigned, frustrated face.

Lantern-Bearer

And our heroine, she who journeys above the hungry gorge . . . this may well be Dragonfly, or someone very much like her. Her coloring is certainly like Dragonfly’s. Maybe this is an illustration for that Dragonfly sequel, the very first manifestation of the yet-unwritten story! Certainly I love the title “The Hungry Hills,” which may be a chapter! The atmosphere of this painting truly captures the spirit of Dragonfly, doesn’t it? She carries the sword in her left hand. Does that mean she’s left-handed, or that she thinks she’ll need the lantern more than the sword? I like the fact that she wears a skirt: the best heroines are courageous, strong, capable, and feminine — just as the best heroes are courageous, strong, capable, and yet sensitive and gentle in their masculinity.

The Hungry Hills

A final thought on this: in the media of the near future, wouldn’t it be interesting to design an on-line storytelling format in which you’d have a picture like this, and you could click on each cave, each section of the image, and you would be ushered to a different story? A collection accessed through a single painting! Something like an Advent calendar, with wonders hidden behind each window waiting to be opened!

Our second painting is simpler: Three Princesses.

It’s a comedic image, a play on “Rapunzel.” Here, the prince is imprisoned by some sorcery in the tower deep in the forest. By the look of the plant life, he’s been in there for years, though he never ages. Three princesses have come to rescue him, but they’re engaged in a heated argument. The prince is unhappy, and the quest is at a standstill.

Three Princesses

 

Three Princesses

What is the nature of their altercation? Is the prince not quite so charming as they were led to believe? Or is he charming enough, but the three (who pooled their resources and skills to have made it this far) are now realizing that there’s one of him and three of them? Or does the argument concern whose responsibility it was to have brought a rope, or a ladder, or the spell to enter the doorless tower?

the owl

High above the characters’ heads, quite remote from them, perches an owl, who appears at a loss. My theory is that the owl represents wisdom. The meaning is that wisdom is all too often lacking in human endeavor.

Princesses

I love the color called “country tan,” which I used for the lighter backpack, the blonde girl’s pants, and the middle girl’s moccasins. It goes smoothly onto the canvas and dries with a wonderful soft quality.

Three Princesses

This painting was a lot of fun. I love doing dark forests with no sky visible, but those stones in the tower wall were a pain.

When I was younger, I was embarrassed to draw women that were shaped like women. On these princesses, I pulled out the stops and made them as feminine as my abilities allowed.

If anyone wants to, why not try writing us a very short story to go with either painting? Just a paragraph or two would be enough! What quest brings our heroine into the hungry hills? What are the princesses arguing about, and what will the outcome be?

More Paintings

Posted on December 28, 2010 by fsdthreshold

Well, here we go. As Christmas presents for some friends here this year, I decided to get out the brushes and canvases again and attempt to create one-of-a-kind, personalized gifts. (Notice that I didn’t say “great artwork” anywhere in there!) It has been relaxing and therapeutic to paint after the big push to finish The Star Shard on time. (Not that I was particularly tired of writing — but deadlines help, and the swift approach of Christmas with its need for presents was another great motivator.)

I have to apologize in advance for the quality of what you’re about to see. For one thing, these three paintings would be better if an actual artist had painted them. For another, it’s much harder than you might think to get painted images into an electronic format and post them onto a blog! When I asked about professional scanning at a couple different places, there was a lot of inhaling through teeth (which means, “You’re asking something difficult; I really wish you weren’t asking me that”). The pros were worried about shadows created by irregularities in the painted surfaces, etc. The upshot was that it may or may not be possible, but it would certainly involve sending the paintings away to the lab; it would take a long time; and it would be very expensive. [I’d gone into the first place with the merry idea of having them scan the paintings while I waited and then ordering cheap posters for all my friends . . . um, no. Live and learn!]

I tried using my own flatbed scanner — which, of course, is not nearly big enough for the canvases. They are A3 size, and it can only handle A4. But I thought I might scan the paintings a quadrant at a time and have good, digital images of the details. Again, not. For some reason, even when I played with the brightness control and weighted down the scanner lid with a stack of books, the scanned images came out very dim. Hmm.

So I resorted to taking digital photos of the paintings with my camera. Again, Murphy’s Law was strictly enforced. For one thing, it is winter in the northern hemisphere. That means that the sun over Niigata will next show its face in . . . maybe May? If we’re blessed. So I had to use the gray daylight on the edge of my tiny verandah. As I was jockeying into position, icy rainwater dripping off the edge of the roof hit the back of my coat and neatly splashed over the canvas. Grrr! (No damage, since the paintings are protected by nice finishing varnish.) I took gray daylight shots, and then I tried another series indoors by electric lighting. You’ll see a combination of both.

Problem #2: My preference for varnish is high-gloss. Not just “gloss,” but “high-gloss.” It’s beautiful to look at, but a nightmare to photograph. It’s like pointing your camera at a mirror. FLASHHH! That’s why you’ll see these images at all sorts of odd angles. I’m standing on my head with the camera, trying everything I can think of to avoid reflections.

Okay, I think that’s my full battery of excuses. I’m not an artist, I’m not a photographer, I’m poor, I have no patience, I live in a perpetually-cloudy region, and I like high-gloss varnish. May all that serve to predispose you to look kindly and mercifully on these humble paintings!

"What a Lot of Things You Use 'Good Morning' For!"

So here’s Gandalf talking with Bilbo at the beginning of The Hobbit. (I’m clearly not in any danger of being commissioned to do a Tolkien calendar anytime soon!) Sorry about the framing — because of the odd angle, I had to crop like mad, so you can’t see to the edges of the canvas. [This is precisely why Marquee Movies will tell you: always go with letterbox format in your movie rentals and purchases — never settle for the “pan-and-scan,” full-screen versions. Unfortunately, these are pan-and-scan versions of my paintings.]

I do like the expressions on the faces of these two. And the Shire looks sort of inviting. (It looks MUCH more so on the actual canvas, where the colors are brighter and everything looks 40% prettier.)

I like Bilbo’s fat stomach! The influence of the Peter Jackson films is quite evident in the hairstyle, huh? For that teacup, I used a color called “English Lace,” and I didn’t even have to mix it. I like the moss effect on the stone porch-thing. See my signature there in the corner? I always do it in gold, an “F” and a “D” together.

This was the outdoor shot, with a big glare on the canvas. (I took several, and believe it or not, this was the best. Sigh!) No, I don’t think that’s the Party Tree in the background. It’s just a tree. I like the purplish stuff in the hedgerow, and I hope that on your computer it looks better than it does on mine. It’s nice in the original, as is the sunlight on the grassy slopes.

The Eternal Now

This is a picture of me and my two closest friends on this side of the Pacific. (Can you tell which one is me?) It represents both Heaven and those “moments of Heaven” we experience at times in this life.

This is by electric lighting. Of course in Heaven it will be midsummer all the time (heh, heh — Mr. Snowflake is away, so I can say anything I want!) — but maybe the cherry trees in Heaven bloom in the midsummer. The sakura blossoms themselves were easy to paint: I used a large, soft brush like the tuft on a lion’s tail, and when I had the paint mixed to the precise color I wanted (white with the tiniest touch of crimson), I just puffed the brush all over, above every trunk I’d painstakingly drawn first. I like how the most distant trees seem almost a mist. (Those trunks took forever!)

What’s “Heavenly” about this image is that there aren’t crowds of people. There’s the picnic, and then just trees, trees, and trees, as far as the eye can see — and friendly blue hills in the distance. There are no responsibilities. There is only a picnic, and close friends, and good books, and a baseball and ball gloves, and time that does not pass: the Eternal Now. A golden moment unending.

This picture allows you to see the two bicycles in the foreground. The thing about cherry trees is that they bloom for a very short time. It’s like about a week at the most — and if there’s rain or wind during that time, the petals can fall prematurely. For the sakura to look beautiful, a blue sky is required. So in most places, people are very fortunate if they have one or two good viewing days during cherry blossom season. That is a large part of their allure, I suppose. Like a human life, they are here for one shining moment, and then they are gone. A breath. A day and a night, and then Eternity.

The peak of the blooming is called mankai, when every blossom is open, and the boughs look positively heavy with flowers, and every tree is poised in that one breathless instant before the pink rain of falling petals begins. If you get a blue sky on the day of mankai, you have received a wonderful gift. For this painting, I chose the moment when the first few petals are falling — the threshold between the perfect beauty of mankai and the perfect beauty of the pink rain.

The Eternal Now

And now we return to Middle-earth:

The Bridge of Khazad-dum

The classic confrontation between Gandalf and the Balrog is a favorite of artists. But I have yet to see a rendition of this scene that doesn’t ignore Tolkien’s description that the Balrog’s limbs have the coiling property of serpents. Have you seen anyone else tackle that? I’ve attempted to show that here, and I think my design is plausible.

Flame of Udun

The Balrog should be a combination of shadow and flame. See my little orcs streaming down the stairways in the background?

The Balrog

You can pretty much tell that what I love the most about this scene is Moria itself. Moria is the place in Middle-earth that I’d most like to visit. I mean Khazad-dum in its heyday, of course, before it was full of orcs. The folk of Durin! The great city of Dwarrowdelf! (Is it an accident that there’s only one letter difference between “Durin” and “Durbin”?)

Fleeing Companions

Frodo doesn’t want to leave Gandalf. Sam isn’t about to leave Frodo. Aragorn is trying to get them both out of harm’s way. We see Legolas and Gimli here, and I guess the blond hobbit must be Pippin. (Merry wouldn’t be blond.)

In the actual, I love these colors of the stonework.

Nice chasm, huh? 🙂

And there you have it. Once again: if your computer works anything like mine does, if you click on any painting, you can view a magnified version of it. Click again, and you zoom in further. I haven’t figured out how to “click back out” without shutting down the whole window, though . . .

In the previous post, I introduced a quotation from Tolstoy in War and Peace and invited reactions. Thank you to those who offered your thoughts! Here’s the quote once again, and then my two cents:

“Everything I know, I know because I love.”

To love is to step forth, to reach out, to emerge from one’s isolation. It is to sense and savor the world around us. It is to embrace the joy that comes from places, from objects, from activities, and especially from other people. To love is to take a risk — for only when we love do we have something to lose. When we love we are involved; we are invested. Triumph, awkwardness, anxiety, exultation, fear, anger, joy . . . all these emotions that mark us as human beings — are they not all traceable to our loves?

In the movie The Name of the Rose, Sean Connery’s character William of Baskerville says to his novice, “How simple life would be without love, Adsol — how safe, how tranquil . . . and how dull.”

“Everything I know, I know because I love.”

I think Tolstoy was right.

Everything I Know

Posted on December 22, 2010 by fsdthreshold

[I know this is awfully quick for a new entry. If you haven’t yet read the previous posting, “The Reality of Dreams,” I urge you not to miss it!]

One of the movies I enjoyed most in recent months was The Last Station, about Tolstoy in the twilight of his life. The film begins with a quotation from his book War and Peace:

“Everything I know, I know because I love.”

I recommend this quotation as a springboard for discussion here. What do you make of it? Do you like it? Do you agree? Thoughts? Feelings?

I was trying to discuss the quotation earlier this evening with someone here, and even though I’m sure my Japanese translation of it was perfect, it just wasn’t making sense in a literal rendering to the Japanese mind. I’ve often encountered that barrier: people are people, to be sure, and I believe that we all think more or less the same thoughts, although the vehicles for expressing them are vastly different. But sometimes there’s just a Wall, and a thought that makes sense to westerners doesn’t make any sort of sense in Japan . . . and vice-versa. Who wrote, “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet”? I’m guessing Kipling.

The last writing class before the holidays went well today. We studied parentheses, quotation marks, and conclusions of essays. When we come back after the break, rough drafts of the five-paragraph essay are due. Then I’ll be checking/correcting day and night in order to get them back to the students by the following week. Hard work, but fun. Today a student sought me out in the part-time teachers’ room with some excellent questions. When you’re able to answer exactly what someone wants to know, you’re very glad to be a teacher. It was a great final note before the holidays.

Anyway, I have this eccentric custom of, when I write in my journal each night, reading the entry from a year ago and the entry from ten years ago on the same day. It’s interesting to see what I was doing then — the ways that life has changed, and the ways it’s stayed the same. Tonight I came across this entry from ten years ago — December 23, 2000 — that had me laughing so hard my eyes were streaming. See what you make of it. In this excerpt, I’m describing the Christmas caroling event at Shirone Lutheran Christ Church (the church at which I was most recently a volunteer before I retired from OVYM). Here’s the (partial) entry:

“Mr. Kobayashi wore a Santa Claus suit, complete with a white beard. We drove in 3 cars to a nursing home. Sang first on a stage, with Mrs. Yosai playing a piano & Ms. Takeda playing ocarina; then we sang in two different rooms (4 beds per room) of people who were bedridden and couldn’t come to the common room. Then we caroled inside the main entrance of Jusco. [Jusco is like a Japanese Wal-Mart.] Finally, we sang outside, on the sidewalk in front of a strange little health-food store. The owner seems to have some kind of connection with the church, but I didn’t ask what. Rachel pointed out that it was like a store in a dream — not quite focused or logical — a rack of used clothes, stacks of unlabeled cans, weird pictures on the walls of people with exotic illnesses — and a few other items like omochi and soy sauce. Rachel & I had fun talking & laughing; we rode in the Nakanos’ car. I’m really going to miss her when she goes back to the States.”

[Rachel was the OVYM volunteer, two generations after me, at Shirone.] I do not at all remember those pictures on the walls, but isn’t that something? I’ve got to use that store description in a story someday! I do remember that caroling event as if it were yesterday. The organizer of it was so deadly serious about it that we started rehearsals in the spring. Throughout the summer and fall, we moved outdoors for practices, so we could get used to singing in the open air. That was the best-rehearsed caroling I’ve ever been a part of!

Okay: at the request of Marquee Movies, seconded by Mr. Snowflake and Scott, I tried taking a self-portrait of myself wearing the Christmas tie mentioned in the last posting. Here you go:

Fa la la la la -- la la la la!

Yes, there are more paintings coming soon to a blog near you! (And yes, the picture is totally staged. I don’t really paint while kneeling on my bed, and I don’t paint while wearing a necktie.)

Again: a merry and blessed Christmas to all! The world is dark and cold, but we can laugh and sing; we can rejoice. Because of the baby born in Bethlehem, there can be a happy ending to every story, no matter how dark the journey.

The Reality of Dreams

Posted on December 20, 2010 by fsdthreshold

We’re starting into the last week of classes before the Christmas holidays. This week, I always wear my Christmas necktie. Years ago, a former volunteer in the program through which I came to Japan made these neckties for all the guys in the program. It’s a long, large necktie made from cloth patterned with holly leaves and berries — very bright, vivid greens and reds. Some would call it hideous; I think it’s fun and festive, because it’s so obviously Christmas. It’s Christmas shouted from the rooftops — it’s Scrooge after his reawakening running around buying geese for people — it’s the main character at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life — it’s the Grinch swooping down the mountainside, bringing everything back. It’s the exuberance of Christmas in a necktie! Most every year, some students smile at it. A few comment that they like it. A fellow teacher smirked at it last year (in a friendly way).

Anyway, at this holy time of year, the walls of the worlds grow thin, and it’s a good time for storytellers to think.

I was thinking this week about the reality of dreams. Let’s see if I can explain what I mean. In the movie Inception, the main character has that intriguing line about how the most powerful virus is an idea. Once a person gets an idea fixed in his/her head, there’s no unseating it. I’ve experienced this phenomenon time and again in life. Someone gets a mistaken impression, some misinformation, etc., and believes it. You can correct it any number of times, and you come back in six months, and the person still believes the mistake — corrections are often meaningless. I’m sure I’m often that person, too, with some of the “solid facts” in my head being solidly non-factual. (Correct me if you can, please, but I’m warning you . . .)

Don’t we see this force of ideas on display in many great works of literature? Captain Ahab has this bee in his bonnet and can’t let that whale alone, no matter what the cost. Shakespeare — isn’t there the thing in Othello where the bad guy convinces him his wife is unfaithful, and even though she’s innocent, Othello can’t get the idea out of his mind, and he ends up destroying everything he loves, all because of that one planted idea? The Silmarillion — Feanor wants those silmarils back, and he will take on anyone — Man, Elf, or Vala — who stands in his way.

Those are cases where things don’t work out well. But there’s a very positive side to this, too. Take an idea that’s good — a noble theme, a beautiful picture — plant that in the mind, and you’ve done something of service and value.

Take Middle-earth. It’s a place familiar to nearly all of us on this blog. We could fill pages writing the things we know about its peoples, its geography, its history . . . yet it’s “only” an idea — “only” a dream. Where is it? It exists in words printed on pages, enclosed between the covers of books. It exists in paintings and sketches done by artists. It exists in musical compositions, plays, and puppet theater. It exists on records, cassette tapes, CDs . . . and yes, thanks to filmmakers, a version of it exists on celluloid and DVDs.

We cannot get onto a plane or ship and go there. Yet it is a real land, is it not? It’s far more real to me than Norway, or Brazil, or the state of South Dakota — about those places I know next to nothing. But I know Middle-earth. I’ve spent hours and hours . . . I’ve spent years there! And so have countless other readers, viewers, listeners, and dreamers, both in this generation and in the generations of the past.

Yet Middle-earth began as a dream in the mind of one man . . .

The dreams I have at night seem to be forged of memory, emotion, the machinations of my subconscious, and perhaps at times an element from outside, the hints and utterances of the Divine — but I don’t think I want to go there in this post.

The dreams I have in the daytime — my writerly dreams — are forged of much the same things, with a bit more conscious shaping and/or interference, which is both a good and a bad thing.

I was thinking of the storm cellar in our side yard back at the house where I grew up. It was a brick dome, covered with concrete, half-covered with dirt, and overgrown by grass, weeds, and trees-of-Heaven. Nothing at all — a simple, rustic construction of mundane materials. Yet for my cousin and me, playing with our dinosaur sets, it became a mountain of cliffs and jungles, a place of infinite tiny, secret places for dinosaurs to hide. Later, for my neighbors and me, it became the Orca, or a similar shark-fishing boat. These notions exist only in our own heads, and (as Chris noted in a comment on the previous posting) they will vanish with us at no loss to the world. But the memories of those imagined things are more important to us than the bricks and the concrete, or any intent of the original builders of the place — our dreams, I would argue, are for us more real than the physical place. They survive, bright and vivid now, though the old cellar is falling to ruin. The barn of our childhood is gone, but it lives in my story “Star,” about the ghost horse, and in our memories.

The storm cellar -- cliff of dinosaurs, shark boat, fortress, ski slope, movie location, cave.

It seems to me that memory is an enormous tool in the storyteller’s kit — memory, that major component of dream. Is it not memory that gives the major fire, the truest authenticity, to the worlds we sub-create? When we can lay hold of the merest fragment of something we absorbed as children, and when we can get that into an expressed form, we have something alive and powerful. (This relates directly to what Mr. Brown Snowflake and Nick were saying in the comments on the previous post just now!)

And does it not seem that memories can be better and more solid even than the realities they’re based on? We take a memory, and we preserve, amplify, and focus it through art (whatever our particular art form may be). Then it has a life far beyond its original instance.

At the end of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puck famously says:

“If we shadows have offended,

Think but this (and all is mended),

That you have but slumber’d here,

While these visions did appear.

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream,

Gentles, do not reprehend.”

I think Matthew Cuthbert from Anne of Green Gables said to Puck: “Could you maybe apologize and not really mean it?” Heh, heh, heh. Dreams not real? — Pshaw, I say! Few things are as substantial and fruitful as a dream. The power of dream is beautiful and devastating. It can wreak ruin or create sanctuary for untold millions.

Three cheers for art in its various forms! Three cheers for art, which captures the shining moments as they flow past and makes them come-backable! . . . which finds their meanings, near-eternal as the belt of Orion, true as the light in leaves!

And may I take this opportunity to say: a merry and blessed Christmas to all!

The Power of Words

Posted on December 9, 2010 by fsdthreshold

Before I get into the main post, some quick statistics. I just finished grading the midterm test in my academic writing course. The grade breakdown was as follows: with the bonus points available, the number of students who scored 100% or above was 6. Scoring in the nineties, there were 7. In the eighties, 9. In the seventies, 5. In the sixties, 3. Those numbers made me pretty happy. On the one hand, I’m teaching the material — no one was clueless. No one failed. On the other hand, the test I wrote was a good measuring tool — with no curving or manipulation of numbers, the students differentiated themselves nicely across the spectrum. Not trying to vaunt myself here — soli Deo gloria! — I’m just saying that, when it’s going well, teaching and learning are things of beauty.

Anyway, I was going to do the Part 2 of the World Fantasy Convention, but I came across something far better. (That Part 2 is still coming, never fear.) With the kind permission of the author, here is another guest column. This is by friend-of-the-blog Nicholas Ozment. You’ve met him before in an interview on these pages. Any introduction of Nick is bound to leave something out. He writes pretty much everything, and does it well. His own site is over there in the blog roll, or just in case, it’s Ozmentality: http://ozment.livejournal.com.

Nick’s new humorous fantasy book Knight Terrors: The (Mis)Adventures of Smoke the Dragon was just released this fall from Ancient Tomes Press, an imprint of Cyberwizard Productions. It’s beautifully illustrated by Richard Svensson.

Anyway, here is his essay, our guest column:

The Power of Words

 I wish for you to have some first-hand experience of—I wish for you to know—the power of a master storyteller, of a golden-gifted writer.

 The future washes over us and washes over us again, becomes the present tide, recedes into the past. In the universities, the English departments shrink, the philosophy departments dwindle down to one or two full-time professors—a token formality, for did they not give birth to the university? The humanities are jostled aside by the colleges of business, computer science, engineering.

 Yet before all our sciences, all our technologies, there were words. Without them, nothing we have achieved is possible. And without Story nothing achieved could have been first imagined.

 Fewer and fewer people read. They don’t read books or newspapers or magazines. Yet the word is still powerful, far more powerful than most realize. “The pen is mightier than the sword” is as true today as when Edward Bulwer-Lytton penned those words in 1839.

 Words are powerful, and stories are the power harnessed and directed. Go ask Homer. Go ask Shakespeare. Go ask Dickens. Sit at their feet and they will still tell you, though they are centuries dead.

 When a student reads Cormac McCarthy or Margaret Atwood or Toni Morrison, he/she may discover what it is like to be in the hands of a master — a storyteller who binds you with words, and your enchanted response is, “Storyteller, take me where you will; show me what you will. I will go.”

 Such writers can reach inside us and make us think thoughts we never thought. Combinations and permutations of thought our minds would never have conceived on their own. We may feel great emotion or conflicting emotions. We see pictures in our heads we have never seen. This is still a more potent magic than images projected on a screen. And even before a filmmaker and his crew creates the moving picture, a writer has crafted the words that made them see it, to interpret and show to us.

 When technologies fail and civilizations fall, words remain. They are often the one legacy to survive when all else has crumbled. And the stories. Which never grow old, as long as there are humans to hear them. And perhaps, when humankind has passed from the face of the Earth, they will still be stored in the mind and echo in the ears and flow from the breath of God.

Thanksgiving Weekend — Thoughts

Posted on November 24, 2010 by fsdthreshold

Okay, it’s high time I posted here. What is a blog without any new posts, right? Though I must say, I deeply appreciate everyone sticking around during the quiet stretches, keeping the blog alive in the comments section. I’m reminded again and again of how it is our blog.

More about World Fantasy is still coming. But for this entry, I feel like simply talking — no unifying theme (unless one emerges) — just a stream of the state of things for me as we move into the Thanksgiving weekend.

I could have called this post “In the Smoke,” because I’m in that exciting place right now with revisions of The Star Shard. I’m doing some intense rewriting of the climactic scene. Up till this point, I’ve kept a clear tally of how far I’ve been getting through the manuscript, following my editor’s extremely helpful notes, adding in some new ideas of my own. But at the climax of a book, all cold calculation dissolves, and you just ride the avalanche on your surfboard. [How’s THAT for an analogy?] There’s no seeing or hearing anything but the dust and the roar until all the inevitabilities settle into place. So, for about the next three days, that’s where I am. It’s one of the most exhilarating times for a writer. It’s a good place to be on Thanksgiving weekend!

And just before the deadline, too. I’ve been working steadily toward my deadline of December 1st, when I have to turn the book back in to my editor. The timing should work out just right, Lord willing. But this close to the deadline, it’s suspenseful, isn’t it? It’s like the scene in Apollo 13 when the capsule with the exhausted, harried astronauts has re-entered the atmosphere, and no one knows whether they’ll make a safe splash-down or whether they’ll be incinerated in the atmosphere. There’s the expected zone in which all radio contact is lost. Silence, silence, the cameras scanning the skies . . . silence, silence, the attempts to hail them met only with silence. Gary Sinise standing there in Mission Control, a frown on his brow as he strains to hear a reply through his headset. Silence, silence . . . and then a burst of static, the voice of a living astronaut, and the glorious, blessed opening of a parachute.

Um, that will be me at the end of this month. Lord willing! 🙂 “Houston, we have a book! We have a book!”

Orion is dazzlingly clear tonight (as is the moon, a little past full), and I saw the bright cloud of the Pleiades. A friend back home who keeps me informed of what the Farmers’ Almanac says tells me that this was the Full Beaver Moon we just witnessed.
 
My writing class went really well today! [I warned you this would be rather stream-of-consciousness!] For the second time (at least the second time; maybe it’s happened more often) this semester, we had perfect attendance, which is really hard to do with a class of 31 upper-classmen. 31 university students is hard enough, but during a cold season (flu & colds going around), with all the job interviews and school visits and practice teaching and special seminars that seniors go to, it’s amazing that everyone can be there. And God helped! I prayed right before class that I would be able to teach clearly, and I think it was a very clear lesson. The topic today was essay structure, particularly the thesis statement and the body of the essay. After passing back homework papers and doing the Quote for the Week, I gave a brief lecture on essay structure using a big diagram on the board and a sample essay handed out to the students, in which we identified the various parts. Then, for the main part of the class, students used the information they collected last week from interviewing a partner. I gave them a worksheet I’d made: one side of a piece of typing paper with a blank line for a title and then five big rectangles representing the introduction, three body paragraphs, and conclusion. There were more blank lines in the appropriate places for the thesis statement and the topic sentences of the paragraphs. Our focus today was organization, so the students didn’t have to be so concerned with grammar and spelling. I instructed them to look at the information in their notes about their partner and try to sort it into material for three separate paragraphs. They filled in the worksheet accordingly, writing notes inside the rectangles to show what content they would put into each paragraph. And they had to write a thesis statement for the whole essay as well as topic sentences for the body paragraphs. (We didn’t officially do anything yet with the intro and the conclusion–I haven’t taught those yet–but some students tried it anyway, which was fine.) As they worked, I walked around to help them individually. I could really see the light going on for some of them as they got the idea that the three body paragraphs develop different aspects of the thesis. Days like this are fun!
 
Of course, I had a lot of papers to check through tonight, since I collected those at the end of class! 
 
So, I suspect a lot of us saw the latest Harry film this past weekend. (Don’t worry — absolutely no spoilers here. And don’t anyone dare spoil anything for me! I don’t yet know how this story is going to end.) I went to the delightful after-midnight showing at my local theater, which is the way I experienced many showings of The Lord of the Rings. [Twice, if I remember correctly, I’ve had to explain to patrolling policemen that I’m walking home from the movie theater at 3:00 a.m. — really! Police officers here don’t have a whole lot to do . . .]

Every single time I experience more of Harry Potter, either reading one of the books or seeing one of the movies, it messes me up emotionally. I don’t think I will ever fully get over my envy and the anxiety it sets off in me as a writer. I really, really want to write something that good, that big, that deep, that complex, that moving . . . I want to write a story that will far outlive me, that zillions of people around the world will embrace and enjoy–to create (sub-create, Tolkien would rightly say) a world that readers will want to live in. No other books/movies set me off in the same way. It’s partly the widespread success of the books, completely unprecedented in the history of the world; and it’s partly that J.K. Rowling is so close to my own age, and our careers were pretty much parallel until her books started taking off the way they did. (She even taught English as a Second Language overseas. Dragonfly and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone came out at about the same time.) It’s partly that I also write YA fantasy using magical creatures, dark mysteries, etc. Even a lot of our naming sense is very similar. It’s hard for me to deal with the fact that she really got it all together. The lightning bolt of inspiration struck her, and she pulled together just the right combination of ideas, storytelling, timing, etc., to produce a series of books for the ages. I can’t imagine anything I’d rather do as a writer than to make something like that! If it were totally beyond my ability, it wouldn’t bother me. (It doesn’t bother me, for example, that a friend of mine is a fantastic violinist. I can appreciate classical music as a fan, pure and simple. It’s not something I have any talent for, so I can just listen and enjoy it.) But creating a wonderful series of fantasy books seems so close, so much within the realm of possibility . . . but it’s finding that right, perfect combination. Or perhaps, that right combination finding us. I think it was more a case of Harry finding J.K. Rowling than the other way around. I believe she’s even said that, as have many other famous writers about their famous works.
 
One thing I’ve been thinking about is trying a more disciplined approach to plotting. J.K.R. said in an interview that she spent an entire year plotting the whole series before she ever started writing the first book. And that’s how she achieved that marvelous unity and coherence, that seamless quality — that steady improvement of the books. Instead of “trying to top” her previous books, she was steadily building one story toward its climax.
 
I have always taken the other approach, the one used by Stephen King of discovering the story as I go along. I know that can work very well — obviously! Stephen King knows what he’s doing. But I think plot — and especially plot as determined by character — is a weak area of mine, and I need to consciously spend more time on it. Focusing on people . . . on putting them into situations that threaten and test them to the max . . . on being true to their emotions, their reactions, their interactions. For me, I think the “cool settings” and place descriptions will always come naturally — but a book needs to be a lot more than that to resonate with readers. It HAS to be all about the characters. I really want to try something with many layers, with story threads in the past and the present. To do that, I think a writer has to be very conscious of the structure — that is, s/he has to plan it out — it’s much harder for a multi-layered story to happen “accidentally.” I think I’ve been leaving too much to chance.
 
If an artist is truly a genius, I think the “chance” approach is more likely to work. Such a genius can just “start writing,” and an awesome book will emerge — but what’s really happening is that the writer’s subconscious and instincts are doing all the work that us lesser intellects need to do more consciously.

Anyway, Thanksgiving is here! I always enjoy it in Japan. No one else is celebrating it. There are no turkeys, no feasts, no gorging on far too much food; so it’s much easier to focus on the essence of the holiday: giving thanks for the amazing blessings we have. (And yes, I usually find a way to work some sort of Thanksgiving-reminiscent food into my diet, whether it’s lunch from Kentucky Fried Chicken [a similar bird], or a turkey breast sandwich from Subway, or some cheese [a rare commodity here].)
 
When I was a kid, I associated Thanksgiving with reading for some reason. I have powerful memories of being curled up with a book while the aromas of Mom’s cooking wafted through the house. I think that’s a picture of Heaven — to be completely at peace and free, with no responsibilities; but to be in the midst of loved ones; to have the unending feast of the Lamb all laid out before us; to be full of excitement and creativity and Story . . . “And we’ll all go together, / Where the wild mountain thyme / Grows amang the bloomin’ heather . . .” (That’s from the traditional song “Wild Mountain Thyme,” as performed by The Tannahill Weavers on their album Dancing Feet — perhaps my favorite song of all time . . . perhaps . . .)

“Okay,” as we used to say during D&D sessions, “that’s about a turn!” That’s about a blog post, I reckon. Talk to you again soon!

Happy Thanksgiving!

World Fantasy Convention 2010, Part I

Posted on November 8, 2010 by fsdthreshold

I’m back from Columbus, Ohio, and as usual, World Fantasy was fantastic and productive! I’m sure I won’t get it all talked about in this first posting, so I’m calling this “Part I.”

About the trip itself: Chicago lived up to its nickname of “the Windy City.” I had a brief connection layover there, and because of high winds, our plane was ordered into a holding pattern before it could land. We were about a half-hour late getting down, and it was a wild ride. I was sitting next to a young, very cute Chinese mom and her restless little two-year-old girl, and the mom seemed really upset and half sick from the bumping and shaking. When we finally got on the ground, she dazedly asked me why the landing had been so rough, and I realized she hadn’t been able to understand the English announcements. I explained to her about the wind, and she said “Ohhh” with an air of revelation. She must have been thinking that American Airlines planes and/or pilots were really bad! The connecting flight was also about thirty minutes late taking off, so it all worked out. The flight schedule monitors at the airport showed nearly every flight DELAYED DELAYED DELAYED DELAYED. Anyway, there were no disasters, so it was a good trip for all of us passengers.

Remember how, at the Con, they give you a bookbag stuffed with free books that publishers are trying to promote? My convention-going friends and I had a good laugh over a distinct pattern on book covers this year. What’s extremely hot right now are books about a tough female protagonist who usually isn’t completely human. She’s half-fairy or half-vampire or half-werewolf or half-something else. She has a big-time rivalry/love interest with a brooding, mysterious guy who is also not human. And here’s the funny part — I am not making this up! — you can lay the books out side-by-side and see this pattern: the tough, beautiful girl is on the cover, but you don’t see her whole face. You see her from about her nose to her knees. She’s invariably wearing close-fitting leather and carrying some kind of formidable weapon, either a big knife or a big gun. Her chest is right about in the center of the cover. And the book’s title very likely is some combination of the words “Angel,” “Dark,” “Moon,” “Blood,” and/or “Hunt.” Heh, heh — if Dragonfly had been published this year, it would have been called Dark Blood Moon Angel Hunt, and Dragonfly would be gasping for breath in her tight corselet. And she would be older than 10/11, at least on the cover!

So, where to begin? I won’t try to do this in any particular order. For several years, I’d been wondering about Arkham House. I hadn’t heard a peep from them, and it was hard to tell from their website whether they were still there or not. Well, talking to some friends in the dealers’ room, I heard that they’ve been going through a rough stretch, a dormant period, but that new life has just been kindled in the embers. On the last morning of the Con, I walked into the dealers’ room for a final time, and my friend Michael (who, I was honored to learn, actually reads this blog!) told me there was someone who wanted to meet me.

It turned out to be a distinguished gentleman named Dr. George A. Vanderburgh, who is one of two editors dedicated to getting Arkham House back on its feet. He shook my hand and pinned an Arkham House pin onto my shirt. We talked for a while. He gave me a photocopied letter explaining the new focus and direction of Arkham House. I’ve since heard from him that Dragonfly is still in print with AH and is still selling slowly — which, eleven years after its publication, is none too shabby! He told me that April Derleth, the owner and publisher of AH, speaks very highly of me, and he said that if I have any unpublished dark fantasy, he would like to have a look at it. I was most honored to meet him and thrilled to see that AH is in good hands, that it is moving forward. It’s the last remaining small-press publisher of weird fiction from the classic pulp era, so it’s a treasure we don’t want to lose. For any blog readers who don’t know: April Derleth is the daughter of August Derleth — who, with Donald Wandrei back in 1939, started Arkham House as a way of getting the works of their friend and mentor H.P. Lovecraft into book form. I have corresponded directly with April Derleth — so I’m just three persons removed from H.P.L. himself! Back in early 2005, I drove through Sauk City, Wisconsin, in a rented car on my way to Illinois. Sauk City is the home of Arkham House. I was there late in the day, so the publishing house was closed, and I hadn’t given them any warning that I was coming. But I saw the entrance driveway and the picturesque cemetery where August Derleth is buried. And the physical layout of Sauk City, combined with my own hometown, became the setting of “The Bone Man,” which I wrote that fall.

But I digress. What I’d really like to do in the near future is write a sequel to Dragonfly and submit it to AH. The book was written with full expectation of a sequel. “So many books, so little time . . .” Anyway, meeting Dr. Vanderburgh was one highlight of the convention for me!

Two guys at different times brought me their copies of the hardback Dragonfly to sign. (I believe they were SF Book Club editions, as the covers were slick, not the ordinary paper finish of the AH edition.) One was at a publisher’s party and one was at my reading. And my book-dealer friend Otto had four copies of the hardback that he had me sign, so that he can sell them as signed copies.

My readings went well! The first was Saturday night at 8:10. I went to dinner with the JABberwocky Literary Agency at 6:00. JABberwocky kindly invites all its clients who are present to dinner one night during the Con, so that we can get to know one another. Because of my readings, I had to bow out before any of the food came — but my very gracious agent Eddie later came to my reading and brought me a box of leftover pizza from the dinner — above and beyond the call of duty!

Anyway, that first reading was for Black Gate Magazine. Editor John O’Neill put together a mass reading of BG authors. We all had a ten-minute time slot to read from our stories in BG. This was another real highlight of the Con for me. Since so many were reading, the room was packed — it was wonderful to read to an actual audience! Some friends came to support me, too. John knew about my own reading, scheduled for 9:00, so he went out of his way to let me have an early slot. I was the second reader, right on the heels of the now-famous James Enge. I couldn’t have asked for a better time — the audience was warmed up, but they weren’t tired yet. I read a selection from my story “World’s End,” forthcoming in BG #15 (the very next issue!). I think it went over well — several people sought me out afterwards to tell me I’d done a good job, and one editor of a small-press magazine gave me his card and said he hoped I’d submit some stories to him! (I wouldn’t want to be on a panel, where you have to sound intelligent and be erudite; but give me an audience and something scripted, and I’m in my element — a fish in water, a salamander in the fire!)

My own reading was at 9:00 in the Knox Room. I liked the room a lot better than the venue I was given last year, which was the middle of a corridor. A Con volunteer brought me a name card. Instead of the high desk, towering over the room, I opted to stand down on the floor just in front of the audience. I had nine people in attendance, exactly the same number as last year! This year five of them were close personal friends: two from Minnesota and three from Pittsburgh. The sixth was Eddie; the 7th and 8th were a young married couple I know from previous Cons [I was grateful they came!], and the 9th was a gentleman I didn’t know. He asked me to sign his hardback Dragonfly before the reading. He just wanted my name, not a personalization, so I assume he means to re-sell it. But he did stay for the reading!

During the Q and A after the reading, my friend S. asked me a good question: How am I able to write from the perspective of women and girls? (Dragonfly, The Star Shard, and Agondria are all from the perspective of female protagonists.) My answer had two parts: one, on the whole, I prefer the company of females. If I’m going to spend a whole novel in someone’s head, I’d rather be with a lady. But two, answering more seriously: there’s really nothing I change about myself to write from a female perspective. I’m not sure what that says about me! Dragonfly is essentially written from my own perspective at ages 10-11. Are 10-year-old boys that different from 10-year-old girls? I don’t really think so. Cymbril in The Star Shard is basically me, and she’s about 12. The women of Agondria are me. I guess the ultimate answer is that I don’t think gender is that big of an obstacle. Novels such as Corin Booknose and The Fires of the Deep have been written through the POV of a male character. “A Tale of Silences” has a male protagonist, as have most of my Cricket stories. The characters who find me are sometimes male and sometimes female.

I think this is a good place to end Part I. More will be coming in a couple days.

DRAGONFLY: Historical Notes and Pictures

Posted on October 16, 2010 by fsdthreshold

In honor of the recent round of comments and questions about Dragonfly (see the previous post for some wonderful stories of how readers first encountered the book), I wanted to give you a few more glimpses into the book’s origins. In a long-ago post (still available for reading/viewing on this blog) called “Dragonfly: The Commentary Track,” I posted a couple photos of the “Dragonfly Grove” at Niigata University — the little grove of trees under which I had the first concrete sparks of the idea for the novel. But of course, the book began to percolate long before that. As Tolkien wrote: “[A book such as The Lord of the Rings] grows like a seed in the dark, out of the leaf-mould of the mind.” The “mould” of fallen autumn leaves that produced Dragonfly lies back across the decades in the little prairie town of Taylorville, Illinois, where I grew up.

Taylorville is the seat of Christian County. Here's the famous courthouse. This is the angle from which I most frequently saw it, from the corner nearest our family's bookstore.

In the book’s opening chapter, the eponymous main character, Dragonfly, walks down an alley after a school open house. That alley was based directly on the alley I walked down every afternoon, after school, to get to our bookstore.

The DRAGONFLY alley, looking west. The section I frequented runs from the offices of our local daily paper, the Taylorville BREEZE-COURIER, straight to the back door of our old bookstore, The Book Center.

In that chapter, Dragonfly encounters mysterious figures lurking near the back entrance of the bank.

The name of this bank has changed many times, but in my childhood it was the First Trust and Savings. This is where the mysterious strangers in Chapter One of DRAGONFLY lurked.

Dragonfly’s Uncle Henry owns and operates a funeral home. From the back door of our bookstore, I could see Shafer’s Funeral Home. I remember the visitation for my Grandma Emma there. That experience features largely in the part of the book in which Willie is captured by the denizens of Harvest Moon. I was picturing the interior of Shafer’s.

Shafer's Funeral Home is in downtown Taylorville; Uncle Henry's is more at the outskirts of town, next to a millet field.

Can you picture a jack-o'-lantern aglow in every window?

Here's the building in which we had our bookstore. I had forgotten how steeply-sloped the street is!

The Book Center in May of 1970. Along that left-hand wall, I made the discoveries of H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Richard Adams.

The white storefront was our bookstore. Eddy's Studio was next-door on the left, a photographic studio and camera shop.

And Eddy is the guy who took these pictures of me, right behind our store. I'm leaning on the hood of Mom's car. This would be in about the era that my head was full of The Planet of the Apes, soon to give way to Jaws.

Heh, heh, heh!

 

This photo was taken by Phil Jacobs for the DECATUR HERALD & REVIEW in the summer that DRAGONFLY was first published by Arkham House, 1999. Mr. Jacobs chose our old chickenhouse as the background.

This was taken in Tokyo's Kinokuniya Bookstore, when the Ace edition of DRAGONFLY was on the shelves there. I was excited!

Since I'm throwing pictures of me around, here's my favorite fairly recent one. This was taken in the summer of 2009, I believe.

This photo by Chris was taken in 1979. That is not my bicycle. (I wish I could claim the clothes weren't mine, either.)

October Sunset Walk

Posted on October 8, 2010 by fsdthreshold

This time I’m going to go completely visual and let the pictures take center stage.

One of my favorite courses for my hour-long daily walk is one I call the "Summer Trees Course." This is a view from near the beginning.

The pictures were taken late in the day, at about the time I normally walk. I often pause at this point to peer into the trees, listen to the insects, and admire the evening light. Whatever I'm working on at the time is turning in my head.

The path leaves the first group of trees and heads into the setting sun. This is a pavement permanently blocked off from any car traffic, so kids and families from the apartment building at left often play ballgames here.

This is a look back in the direction of my place. It's a view I ordinarily see on the return trip.

Now I'm out on the main part of the course. A long, narrow park of sorts has been built along the Shinano River (Japan's longest river, which reaches the sea in Niigata City). Nice rock gardens and wooden footbridges abound here.

This evening as I passed this location just after the sun had set, a crow was sitting atop one of the rocks, silhouetted against the light western sky with willow branches beside him. It would have made a fantastic picture. I'll have to be content capturing it with words.

These log benches are ideal for lying down on. You lie in the notched part, and the raised section at the end makes a perfect pillow for your head. You can put your hat over your face, or else leave your eyes uncovered to gaze up at the shifting clouds.

Sunset approaches. Lord Dunsany wrote of "Those godlike shapes among the sunset's gold." In Japan, willow trees have ghostly connections. They're the trees beneath which ghosts appear.

Sunset on October 1st: warm, yet cooling. The sunset takes on a new character.

Beside the path, this little circular course is designed for relaxation and good health. The railed-in walkway has a variety of textures to stimulate pressure points in the soles of the feet. You take off your shoes and walk around it over inlaid rocks -- some rounded and smooth, some sharp, some rather agonizing -- and you come away a better person.

The Sunset Gate. There it is: the gate you need to go through to reach the setting sun.

The Shinano River: Here, we're looking toward the sea.

The pale sunset of October.

Briefly, the path dips away from the riverside and follows this stone wall.

Off and on over the years, I've heard the notes of the riverside trumpeter. Some trumpet player has discovered he can practice without disturbing anyone beside the river; and he can get amazing acoustics under one of the bridges. I've never encountered him close up, but I've often heard him at a distance, playing his scales and melodies across the river. In years past, I did the same with my trombone.

Scenes of solitary beauty lead one to reflect on how amazing life is: the things one is given to see and experience in our brief span of years.

This is my favorite part of the course, with trees on one side and the river on the other. The trees are dense and filled with singing insects. Fish splash at times on the river's surface. The sky is amazing.

When I was a kid, having seen JAWS at age 9, I dreamed of becoming a shark fisherman. I'd while away my days out on the sea in a little boat like this one, and I always pictured myself between battles with sharks, sitting in the cabin and reading the latest published Frederic S. Durbin novel, which, in my daydream, was a paperback with a silver cover. So I'm not sure if my fantasy was more about shark fishing or more about being a writer . . .

Walking is, for me, an essential part of writing. It's when I work things out; when I unravel those vexing problems of plot; when I begin to understand where the book or story is going.

Throughout this wonderful, hot summer, I walked this course. Since it's fairly private, I could be noisy if I wanted. I sometimes worked on my vocal impersonations -- specifically, Christopher Walken and Al Pacino. Yes, I practiced those two quite a lot in the summer of 2010.

Bobby Frost: "The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep."

Sorry about the "Bobby." I'm still thinking like Al Pacino. The sun really starts talking once it's down.

At the very beginning of this blog, I quoted Bilbo and his thoughts about the road that "goes ever, ever on." This is a part of it.

Yes, this is the part of the road that runs along beside the Shinano. Followed far enough, it runs beside your door; and it runs to the deserts beyond Faraway; and it leads to Elvenhome.

This is a factory that makes cement. This is just about at the 30-minute point, where I turn around and head back to hearth and home. In the twilight, even this factory seems an enchanted place, with piles of rock and silent machines, with chutes and bridges and sometimes a late workman putting a saurian machine to bed.

This bridge marks the terminus; this is where I turn around. Sometimes the ghostly trumpeter plays here, though always on the far bank.

Have you ever seen such amazing colors? This, my friends, is October. October in the sky; October in the water; "October is In the Chair" (fantastic story by Neil Gaiman in FRAGILE THINGS). You know, this would be a good time to read DRAGONFLY. Does anyone have a story about how you first encountered that book? I'm thinking of the wonderful anthology titled OCTOBER DREAMS, edited by Richard Chizmar and Robert Morrish. There's a beautiful October sky on its cover, too, and its contents are the quintessential October experience.

And now the path turns homeward.

But Is It Art?

Posted on September 23, 2010 by fsdthreshold

It brings me great delight to announce that another guest columnist has come forward! The following essay has been written by our own Daylily. [In case anyone doesn’t know: to view the photos at a larger size, just click on them.] With deepest thanks to her, here it is:

But Is It Art?

“Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.” — Allen Saunders in Reader’s Digest, January 1957

Art or art-like constructions may happen in the same fashion. I was planning my errands. I habitually group errands so as to save time and gas and reduce auto emissions. I would be passing by the dry cleaners, so why not recycle all those wire hangers? They seem to multiply like gerbils (but really, it’s because my husband has his shirts laundered and gets them back on hangers). So. Take the hangers out of the closet, stack them up, rubber band them per usual. Easy. Umm, no. The hangers had other ideas. It certainly looked as if it would be easy to remove them from the rod, but they were seemingly bonded together into an amazing tangled mess. I began to wonder, could I purposely build a structure, an artwork of wire hangers? I certainly had plenty of material. I wonder, I wonder . . .

My first construction was in the living room, on the carpet. My self-imposed parameters were that the hangers must not be purposely bent and that nothing must be used to fasten the hangers together. In addition, I purposed to make a freestanding structure, i.e., with no support except from the hangers themselves. I succeeded within a reasonable length of time. Then I found that said structure did not photograph well, because of the patchy sunlight in the living room and the dark couch as background. I might have succeeded with the photo later in the day, but, alas, I brushed against one of the hangers at the base of the creation, and the structure collapsed flat!

"Wire Tree One" in process

Since I would have to start over, I moved the field of operations to the foyer. I draped sheets to make a good background for photos and began construction on the hard tile floor.

"Wire Tree One" -- a three-foot high structure made entirely from wire hangers

 I got nowhere. The hangers could get no purchase on such a surface. After some experimentation, I found that an old nubbly rug, covered with the sheet, made a good surface. After that, I failed several times to build anything with height to it. My technique needs work, evidently. Building the base of the structure, however methodical one might attempt to be, remains an inexact science if one is not going to wire the hangers together to stay precisely where one wants them. Achieving height requires some hangers to be added simply for balance. Hence, the hangers sticking out in various directions. Of course, those help to make the thing more treelike, as well. The technique is something like building a house of cards and something like the game Blockhead, where one must always be aware of the center of gravity of the tower.

"Wire Tree One" with ornaments

Eventually, I succeeded in making what I call “Wire Tree One.” I was forced to compromise on the last parameter. It was either that or start over. I compromised. The tree is supported from the base and from one point at the back, where a hanger leans against the draped antique chest. I thought that the tree lacked definition, so I added some Christmas ornaments.

But is it art? It felt like making art. To me, making art is an adventure. It involves cooperating with the materials, letting the materials dictate what happens next, starting with some sort of idea, but letting it change as the work progresses. Yet, really, how much skill does it take to create something like this? I have seen no classes in creating wire hanger sculptures. Isn’t art a matter, in part, of training and skill? Perhaps this is not art, but rather, doodling with wire. Perhaps if I made many of these wire trees, I would arrive at one so good that it could be called “art.” Or perhaps the photos of the tree, particularly the one that includes the shadows of the tree, are art, while the tree itself is not.

Close-up shot of the top

Here are two pictures of my raw material. You may recall seeing paintings made from dropping paint onto the canvas. If I drop a pile of hangers on the floor, is the result art? How about if I entitle the results “Wire Pile One” and “Wire Pile Two”? Just how much purpose and design does a construction require before it can qualify as art? (Believe me, dropping a pile of hangers on the floor takes considerably less time, patience and skill than “Wire Tree One”!) Maybe if I were to drop the same pile of hangers on the floor numerous times, photographing the result each time, the series of pictures would be art? I could call it “Evolution in Wire.” If I were to start with a small pile of hangers and add a few more for each picture, the title would be even more appropriate. (If you run across this particular invention in an art museum someday, remember, you read it here first!)

"Wire Pile One"

"Wire Pile Two"

Is art, perhaps, a continuum? A beginner’s effort, like a child’s drawing, satisfies the artistic impulse, whether anyone else likes the result or not. Perhaps beginners’ efforts fall on the low end of the continuum, and Matisse and Picasso are at the high end.

"Wire Tree One with Shadow"

Here are some more questions. I am an artist, so if I make something with purpose, is it therefore art, simply because I made it? Furthermore, most people have some sort of creative impulse to make something. Is whatever they make, whether a poem, a song, a painting, a cake, a scarf knitted from a pattern, or a flower arrangement, art? Does one have to be an artist to make art? Or are we all artists, to some extent? What about the distinction between art and craft? If one knits a scarf from a pattern, with the only original feature being the choice of color, is that art or craft? Is art dependent upon originality? Or is art dependent upon whether anyone is moved by it, i.e., appreciates it or is edified or uplifted or amused or horrified by it? That is, is it art because it means something? What about beauty versus ugliness? Is art dependent upon the measure of its beauty? I would submit that there is such a thing as ugly art, though we may not want it in our living rooms.

View of "Wire Tree One" from my study

 

So, dear readers, what is your definition of art? Is “Wire Tree One” art, art-like construction, doodling with wire, or something else? Whatever it is, it is not destined for long life, except in the photos. It now resides in the place of honor usually reserved for my Christmas tree. One would think that if anyone slammed the front door, that would be the end of the wire tree, but it has proved to be remarkably sturdy. I will dismantle it soon. I plan to time the process of taking it apart, and I will count the number of hangers at that time, for those who want to know! In the meantime, when I see the tree from my chair in the study, it makes me happy. There is something cheerful about its crazy angles and its resemblance to a Christmas tree. Is it the ghost of Christmas trees past? Is it a pleasant foreshadowing of Christmas joys to come? What IS this thing?

Top view of "Wire Tree One"