THE CIRCLE OF THE HEART

agnes

 

Pictured here is Agnes Joines, head knocker of our BROC group. That's Blue Ridge Opportunity Commission. BROC is involved with three counties, Wilkes, Ashe and Alleghany. Our branch is the Alleghany Planning Committee. Unfortunately, the county government started a totally unrelated committee called the Alleghany Planning Commission. It seems to me pointless to go on keeping the name we have, because it has been rendered meaningless. Commission or committee, which is it? Whichever. The group is partial to the name, because we've always used it and we had it first. It never meant much of anything before; we don't advertise, self-promote or appeal for money. Not high profile. The lowest of profiles. Stacy, our "secretary" (the S-word in the ABCs of forbidden words---I don't know of another word for her position---office person?), investigates sources for operating money, grants and such, and she helps the people who come through the door seeking assistance, like needing an electric bill paid in the winter when usage triples, firewood, needing repairs on a house, like replacing a window, fixing a leaking roof, and whatever else the need. This is among the poorest counties in the state. North Carolina has never been known for a money state. Our present republican government is consciously pushing the citizens of the state deeper in Depression, supplementing the national government's intent. I didn't realize the extent of poverty in the county until involvement with BROC. I prefer to call it BROC; it's easy to remember and specific to what it is. I, myself, am unable to remember if it is commission or committee. At the same time, I really don't care what it's called. What we do is my reason for being there.  

 

 

stacy

 

Stacy is one of my favorite people in my world. This picture doesn't show her face well, but her attitude comes through clearly. Stacy has a brilliant mind, she just doesn't know it yet. She's on her way, though. Ten more years and she'll be blowing her own mind. She'll be saying, Ten years ago I wouldn't have dreamed I'd be where I am now. I don't think it's exaggeration. Stacy is serious. I mean serious. She is of a mind that life is serious. She takes it seriously. In fun, I have called her Stasi, which is all the more fun because she knows what it is, East German secret police, and doesn't hold it against me as an insult. From my perspective, it's a compliment, because I know she knows what it means, and it wouldn't be any fun if she didn't know what it meant. It's not even teasing. It's playing with words, linguistic humor, among my favorite kinds of humor. I only called her Stasi once; more than once it's boring. I can talk about things with Stacy I can't talk with the others about. Like today, I told her I'd just learned last week that all of Russia from the Ural Mountains eastward is Siberia. I'd believed Siberia was a section in the northeastern part of the country. It's the name of Asian Russia. She said she'd recently learned it, too, and told me about a globe her grandmother has with names of countries she'd never heard of. We do not ever talk politics for reasons we both understand. If we did, we would not talk at all. That's how I like to be with everybody I know. Put that old absolutist mind in gear and look out. I know so few people who agree with me politically that I can't talk political nonsense with anybody. How blessed is that? I like to dwell in the color zone between the extremes of black and white. In light, black is absence of colors and white is all colors. In pigment, black is all colors and white is absence of color. It's the rainbow in between. And light is particles that travel in waves.

 

ernest

 

Ernest is Agnes's husband of sixty years. They've been in love since school. Ernest is fresh out of a very long stay in the hospital, where Agnes said he like-to died twice. Agnes is a refreshing spirit! Ernest is 81 and did not look over 65 before the hospital stay. Today he was slow. Today I saw him look his age for the first time. It doesn't feel right seeing Ernest so bereft of his spirit. He plays bluegrass mandolin primarily, banjo, guitar, and bass. He plays old-time and country too, and sings. Agnes is a good singer of the old songs. In my early years in the mountains, they made an LP together singing hymns with preacher Earl Baker. Baker was the step-son of Henry Whitter, guitar picker of old-time music of the 1920s and 30s, of Grayson & Whitter (GB Grayson played old-time fiddle--has the name the best there ever was--and Henry Whitter did some singing). Henry Whitter spent his later years in Whitehead, just down the road. Earl Baker's daughter gave Whitter's guitar to the Blue Ridge Music Center. I don't usually get a kick out of things like Jimi Hendrix's guitar or even Carter Stanley's guitar, but when I saw Henry Whitter's guitar in its Plexiglas case on the wall, I felt it was something special. I can't explain why. I just felt it. Ernest Joines plays mandolin in the local bluegrass dance band, The Rise & Shine Band. They are the house band at the square-dance place, The Alleghany Jubilee on Main Street. It is the only place in Sparta anything is happening. Tuesday and Friday nights Main Street in front of the Jubilee is loaded with parked cars. Ernest and Agnes ran the Jubilee until Ernest fell into the hospital. A new couple have taken it over who have the personality for it like Ernest and Agnes do. They are part of our group, too, Jack and Linda Joines, but couldn't make it today. Agnes looked tired and drawn from half a year of stress. Having her Ernie back is everything to her now. Nobody in this world could have more loving care than Ernest.

 

 ted, ernest, agnes, stacy, helen

 

It's Agnes's love that pulled him through. She thanked everybody for the prayers today. She said it's a miracle and she just wanted to give God the praise he was due. And that was it. No sermon, nothing political about Christian, no self-congratulations for going to church. This attitude is in the spirit of our group. We are about helping people having a hard time at helping themselves in an indifferent economy. We don't pat ourselves on the back for being righteous. Every one of us is one who  believes the poor need help. We are people who believe Jesus had reason for recommending we help the poor. Churches that praise themselves for being Christian seldom do. We are not church affiliated. Individually, we all have our lives and can't do a whole lot. But together as a small group with clarity of intent we get quite a lot covered. Our fundraising event of the year is the Hillbilly Show in the school auditorium. It's a hometown stage version of the tv show HEE HAW, five dollars a ticket. In my Flatland years I hated it. When I moved to the mountains I watched it every week with neighbor Tom Pruitt and learned to love it. It is a very different perspective seeing it from inside hillbilly culture. The Hillbilly Show amounts to comedy skits absurd to ridiculous, and bluegrass, country and old-time music played by local musicians. I think of it as Dada theater. We couldn't put the show on last year due to Ernest in dire straits and Agnes stressed. Agnes is the director of the show. This year we're a whole lot behind and concerned. The local electric co-op came through with a great assist. Everything's gonna be all right. We have our Ernie back. I wanted to introduce you to everybody, but am running out of space. If you don't mind I'll take a little more space for you to meet Gary and Jean.  

 

 

gary

  

Gary Joines, pictured above, is a Marine, retired bank branch manager, fiddler, guitar and bass player, and he's Ernest's cousin. He plays bass in The Rise & Shine Band. A Marine fiddler seems like an oxymoron, but Gary is no kind of moron. He's a humble man with a wide range of talent. He's good at making a living in this world and he's an active artist. Ted Dorsett is here from Winston-Salem. He has a couple of donkeys too. Jean Osborne, pictured below, is the daughter of country singer Del Reeves' brother, Homer. Del Reeves is from here. Just about everybody in the county named Reeves is kin to him to some degree. His full name is Franklin Delano Reeves. Reckon they was democrats? Jean is a woman of a beautiful heart and soul. When I'm around Jean I see (feel) the brilliant light of a woman of true compassion, one who cares deeply. I don't know if that's how she sees herself. She's too humble to have such lofty beliefs about herself. A Jean moment popped into mind. In the time I was looking up titles of land transfers for a lawyer's office, Jean was doing same for another lawyer. I was in the vault at the register of deeds, and Jane, a woman doing same work for another lawyer, was in there. Jane is someone with a sense of humor all her own and she gives you nothing to go by whether it was a knife or fun. You're on your own to make it what you want it to be. Jane doesn't care. Jean came walking through the door, saw Jane first and said, "How you doin, Jane?" Jane replied without looking up from her work, "Me and TJ was doin just fine til you walked in." Jean stopped like Jane had cocked a gun in her face, thought better of it, knowing Jane, and proceeded, smiling forgiveness. They started talking freely. Jane counted on Jean to get the humor and she did. I can't leave out Helen Crouse. Helen took care of her husband in a long, slow decline after a debilitating stroke. Helen has a bright spirit too. I tend to like to sit next to Helen; she's a light-hearted refreshing spirit. I'm honored to have a place among these people.

 

jean and helen

 

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PAINTING JOHN BROWN'S DREAM

   

     john brown's dream, tj worthington 2012


There it is. I've been at this thing for four months. Not every day by any means. Long lapses of time between a few touches of the brush in one color. Then another time another color. It stands on a portable easel for light weight carrying with collapsible legs like a tripod. Handy. It stands to the left of the wall I'm facing with the home entertainment unit. Watching a movie, it's there. Reading, it's there. Listening to the news, it's there. Writing, talking on the phone, it's there. I see it all the time, and as I look at it ideas come to me for darkening this, lightening that, getting the hands to look flexible. Hair not too neat, but country men keep their hair neat and in place. I've learned that the more time I spend looking at the canvas while it's being painted upon, the more open I am for visual suggestions. Sometimes, just a touch in the right place can bring quite a lot together. Sometimes it doesn't make any difference at all. I've learned so long ago I forgot I learned it that ideas I get in my head don't look as good on a canvas as they look in my head. I think, Oh, great idea! Yeah, great idea, but it makes a lousy visual image put on canvas. What's interesting visually has to feed with visual ideas in direct relation to context. Green, black, brown and white together in an image looks one way when I see it in my mind and another way on the canvas with paint. It takes time to train the mind to have visual ideas that are not mental ideas. Mental ideas are dead in a visual art form. Anway they are for me.


Picasso's Guernica is not dead because it is made of visual ideas. Made of mental ideas it would be boring. That's what I'm getting at where mental ideas are concerned. Mental ideas, to me, are gray without much texture and variety. Though Guernica is painted in grays, it is not static. I suppose the Spanish Civil War was seen in black and white photographs in the Paris newspapers. A visual idea for a painter, like an auditory idea to a musician, has the light of inspiration about it. I don't know a clearer way to say that. It's that light of inspiration that I go for in everything I paint. Light of inspiration, what do I mean? I've been looking at it 3 weeks without touching it. I'm one to feel colors, so there comes a time after seeing the top of Gary's guitar awhile, something isn't quite right. It needs a very thin coat of white over the yellow to take the flash out of the yellow and set it back. The shade I had on it brought the guitar too far forward from where he was sitting in the back of the picture. Just that thin coat of white softened the intensity of the yellow until the guitar settled down into his lap.


George's banjo I wanted to come forward with a fairly intense yellow, it's a yellow wood with the silver hardware of an old-time banjo dancing in black and white streaks. The banjo's yellow draws it forward and at the same time pushes Ernest in his two shades of blue back to where his chair is. I learned that about yellow from Kandinsky's Concerning The Spiritual In Art after he studied color by scientific method and discovered yellow and red come forward all on their own. The colors have gradations from close to far away. I used these principles he found of colors to give a 3 dimensional sensation on a flat surface. I like to honor the 2 dimensional surface and not try to make silly attempts to give the illusion of 3 dimensional. I like to get a feeling of depth by use of colors. Like this one, there is quite a bit of distance between man in foreground and man in background. It has somewhat of a sensation of depth while at the same time staying comfortably in its 2 dimensional context. It is, after all, paint on a flat surface. I don't want to get involved in that's not enough--I need more,;I want to need less. I don't want to pretend against the nature of the surface, the context that all the colors of paint share. At the same time I like to play with the sensation of depth in a kind of juxtaposition with flatness that gives it a visual tension I like. Even though George stands out, it's size not sleights of hand with the brush. Also, I'd been wanting for some time to make one with blue, white and brown the colors, the brown of wood with instruments. The idea came from blue, white and tan look very good together, and at the same time as bland as the very definition of bland. They are Kingston Trio late 50s Ivy League with button down collars and khaki pants with a crease.


 I wanted to take those colors, breathe life into them and make them dance. They don't have to be dull. They're beautiful colors when allowed to play. Got a kind of diagonal oval going that the lines of the instrument necks and the musicians' arms make a triangle and the movement of the energy around that triangle makes an oval. It looks like it seems to have an oval of flowing energy around it. It's kind of tight in the center, the knees in blue and white and dark brown. To me it looks like a washing machine with the lid up looking at the circular energy in there, the colors in motion. I like the triangle of the instrument necks in relation to the oval of flowing energy in the rectangular frame of the picture itself.


The part I'm enjoying immensely about the paintings of musicians is putting a minimalist composition down for the background. This one I divided diagonally slightly, an ochre with a breath of red in it that makes it almost pumpkin. Above is white. Lower portion ocher, upper portion white. Though under the white are a series of vertical rectangles spaced more or less mathematically across the white. First vertical rectangle on left is 2" wide, very pale peach ice cream. Then a 2" very pale olive green, lime ice cream. The next vertical yellow rectangle is 1.5" wide and the green space the same, then the next yellow rectangle 1" wide, all about the same length coming down from above. Then four coats of thin white over the green and yellow wall softened it down until the design of rectangles behind them is softened down to off-white. At first glance, it's a featureless white. Then it looks like 2 different colors, then they become completely visible.


I had hoped when I did this that the more or less mathematical difference in sizes would give a certain dance to the painting. And it did. It was a visual idea that worked visually. It subliminally suggests movement like the pictures suggest depth. I don't know if anybody else would like my minimalist composition of ochre and white with the subtleties under the white. but I could see it on a wall looking good. Then I paint the musicians on top of the composition. In the picture, the ochre lower part is the floor. In my mind's eye I can divide the composition vertically into four vertical panels like a Japanese screen. If I penciled 3 vertical lines to separate it into 4 panels, I'd be the only one to get it. I don't like putting private jokes in paintings, though sometimes I do,  That's only for my mind's eye. I don't want to make it like I'm pretending it looks like something it's not, like printing wood grain on formica. None of these principles I'm rambling about is a rule or even a rule of thumb. I do them because they come to me as a visual idea, and that only. Like a mountain musician likes to make music for the fun of making the music, I am now enjoying making images for the fun of doing it. There is no better reason than that for just about anything.

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