Sparring
Bowdoinham celebrated its birthday this month with a town fair
and toodo at the waterfront. The fire department set up a toll
booths by the bridge to pickpocket the traffic, the Boy Scouts
hauled in a rental fry wagon, there was a dunk tank where you
could immerse your favorite local authority, vendors sold everything
from mums to pickled fiddleheads, Johnny Joyce dressed up as Clarabell,
there was a canoe race, train rides, an art show in the Lodge,
and David tied the Beth Alison to the ramp float and sold grilled
chicken with designer vegetables.
Clarabell
Party Moose
The Rec Committee put the party together, bought a banner and
T-shirts, and crossed their fingers for weather. Friday it was
still Floyding and downcast, but Saturday morning was scrubbed
brisk and glorious. I'd broken down the Moose and the Mermaid,
which have been in Hank and Susy's yard, in case of a big blow,
so I erected them on either side of the boat ramp for the festivities.
The fire department lent me some muscle, and Dirigo 2000 just
shivered slightly in the gusty air. By nine o'clock the lot was
full of townsfolk celebrating themselves.
There'd been some talk of drawing an outside crowd and making
a buck, but I didn't see an unfamiliar face. The vendors did just
fine. Eric and Angie sold out of clam chowder, the trains were
full, and there were grins all around. The petty animosities of
local politics were stowed for a day, and the reverend's parishioners
got to buy chances to dunk him.
Party Mermaid
Matt's Bridge
The only sour note was Carlo, who made a grand insulting gesture
to all of us, then went to New York for Yom Kippur. You see, the
organizing committee, in its camelness, determined that nude art
was inappropriate for the party. They voted that Brent's naked
ladies were verboten, and the rest of us better stay clothed.
Brent was delighted to be BANNED IN BOWDOINHAM, his home town,
but Carlo was OUTRAGED. Wrote a bombastic letter to the committee,
and the press, about freedom of expression, the long tradition
of naked art, how dare they, etc, etc.
He then went around demanding solidarity. We should all boycott
the show in the name of higher principles, and if we didn't we
weren't real artists, or friends of Carlo. He's been on a high
horse all month, what with the grumbles about his genitalia show
in Portland, and we all hoped that he'd come back from the Day
of Atonement chilled out. After he was out of town, we went ahead
and hung non-controversial work in the Lodge.
Matt's Tracks
Matt's Hall
You want to be part of a small town, you play by the local rules,
and Carlo knows this as well as the rest of us. The whole point
of living in the provinces is to enjoy provincialism. Studies
of labia just won't wash in the boonies, no matter what the urban
fixation of the moment is. If it were otherwise, why leave the
city? This little show was a chance for some local artists to
open the eyes of their neighbors, not an invitation to stick a
thumb in them. Carlo is right: that art has to be free to tell
naked truths. But In Your Face is too uptown for this burg. Nine
disloyalists showed their work, made a few sales, and got to hang
out. Matthew hung 15 of the Bowdoinham landscapes he's been doing this year, and I was knocked out again by his
impressionistic take on town. How different perceptions transform
the familiar. Carlo sneered that he had intended to show "a few
landscapes, but no REAL art," before his political ox was gored.
Well, if one purpose of art is to transform our perceptions, Matt's
oils are as real as it gets. Cathy, the Rec chair, bought a big
woodland interior from Matt, and that seemed like a perfect symmetry.
I went around sticking Olympus in everyone's face, to supplement
the Rogues Gallery, and stuffed my own with baked goods. The Blues
Buzzards blew, and Neil and Michael and a lady vocalist laid down
some hot licks. I kept shuttling home to our dooryard, trying
to get that last coat of finish on the Toad, but was drawn back
by music blowing up the hill. By infant fussing time the town
was sated. We broke it down and carried it away before dark.
Boat Launch
(Photos by Peggy Morin)
Next day we launched the Toad, and I'd assumed that would put
a capstone on the frenzy for me. It's not so easy to rev down,
however, when you've been running at full throttle. I kept wearing
groves in the dooryard between work stations. Obsessing. Making
spars.
Bob Kane and I had gone out in his woods and felled two plumb
spruce, three weeks back. One, a standing dead stick behind his
building, for a gaff, and the other a big green beauty, maybe
400 yards out. Limbed the gaffwood and hauled out 20 feet of it,
no sweat. The other was a brute. It took all we had to hoist it
on our shoulders and stagger through the old slash in 100 foot
jags. We spent two hours humping it to Bob's road, like a pair
of mules. Loaded both aboard Ebba, and huffed them home.
Spars
Mast Loaded
Jim had done all the rough work on the spruce, with a chainsaw
and drawknife, by the time I started in after the launch. It had
taken us a couple days to remember how to turn a tree into a spar,
and I finally borrowed Bob's power planer, which we should have
used in the first place. Even with the right tools, I spent all
week making gaff and boom and mast, sun up to fall down. Still
driven like a pieceworker with a mortgage due. So much for the
leisure classes. Give a driven man the tools and materials and
he can turn any pleasure into a treadmill.
At sunset the following Sunday evening I was ready to step the
mast. Mr. Mann and Kayak Mike were on hand for the ceremony. With
McLaughlin's tabernacle, it was a piece of cake setting the butt,
and elevating the spar. Getting it stayed off was a goat roping.
Between the free rotation of the unwedged butt, the unlocked hinge
in the tabernacle, and the slight stretch of the Dacron shrouds
and forestay, we wibbled and wobbled until pitch dark. I'll have
to rethink the standing rigging before I spread sail, but at least
she's sparred. Now all we need is the mainsail from Delano, and
we can sail. A big orange moon came up to admire our handiwork.
Sunset Stepping
Toad in Fog
In the early morning fog on Monday, I walked down to Jimmy's to
spy the Toad, before I went off to another Grand Jury session.
Gaff riggers have such stubby masts compared to the high aspect
sailboats of today that the Toad looks even more crude and comical
with her stick in. She is a vision out of another time. Peggy
observes that the magic boats of myth were all barges. Authur's
and Cleopatra's and the Chinese Emperors'. The Toad has a touch
of the magic. Something about the way she slides over the water
makes her passage stately and sublime. Can't wait to see her with
the big canvas hoisted.
Maybe I should learn about waiting, though. This last month took
on a frantic aspect, which tended to overpower the joy. We do
make such busyness out of our lives. Coming to the end of this
creative frenzy is none too soon, and another confrontation with
indictable larceny and felony sure grounds you. Fall is the time
for buttoning up, and I'm ready.
Stepped
Deflated
I began posting dispatches on the web a year ago, so this is a
birthday for The Journal of a Local Artist. And the balloons are
going flat.. Been three years since I started producing a digital
log, and doing daily drawings. Since we got home from America
I've illustrated a small town at the millennium, followed local
doings around the cycle of a year, and mouthed off more than enough.
So I'm going to sit out a spell. I'll probably do more paintings,
post more dispatches, make more noises: but only when it feels
right. The Toad will get shaken down and hauled out. I'll pick
up the pieces: fulfill the commission promises I've been shelving,
write the letters I've been meaning, fill out some empty spaces
in the web site, run the dog more. I'll keep in touch. Occasionally.
Sail Laced
Hoisted
Last Thursday we had the first real autumn day. Jacket brisk northerly
and a flutter down of leaves. Hardwoods blushing at the season's
rude attention.The world is bronzed, with a red flame here and
there. I'm going to hole up in my cave, and figure on the next
step.