MASKS

masks by tj worthington

A quiet Saturday. Satisfied I'd taken an inspiration to completion the day before, assembling the parts of a project from vision to done in 24 hours. One of my favorite aspects, in dim light and from a distance it looks like two small paper bags glued to white paper. In light, it is wood, the wood itself. Two parts, each composed of three pieces of wood an eighth of an inch thick. I like the raw wood against the white with the black rectangle around it. I'm seeing it now in dim light across the room, two paper bags. I like the paper bag suggestion as well as the wood. The feedbag of sweet grain for the donkeys has a good, heavy paper bag texture. I'm thinking about not throwing it away. It has two layers of heavy grocery bag paper. It has wrinkles from use. Texture. Printing on one side, plain on the other. The inner layer all plain, no printing. Since I've been putting found things together, the hardware store has become my art supply store. Now, it's supplying paper, too. I don't even know where the nearest, or any art supply store is. Used to be one in Galax. I heard there is one in Elkin, but I never go to Elkin and have a hard time motivating myself to drive a hundred miles round trip for one item. It's not the most enjoyable drive around. It's like one of the commercials that is good the first hundred times you see it. The thousandth time, you'd just as soon not see it again. I've been up and down the highway's twenty-seven curves that are cop infested in the stretches of highway at either end. I like restricting myself to locally available resources. I can buy in big quantities online, but can't go into a store and buy one thing. It's ok. I like about it that it makes me inventive. 

minimum shadow when they look like paper bags

The glue used to fix the wood to the background piece of wood a quarter inch thick is wood glue that makes a bond like a weld. My friend Chris Durgin, who makes extraordinary furniture, and is now in a period of making guitars, suggested this brand of glue to the hardware store, Titebond III: Ultimate Wood Glue. He let me have the scraps of wood from a project a year or two ago, several triangles and rectangles of different angles. I keep them in a small box to the right of where I'm sitting now. I look at them from time to time, waiting for them to give me suggestions. Day before yesterday, sitting here writing, I pulled out the sliding shelf to my left and transferred the box to the shelf. I took out the pieces, looking at them in relation to each other. First arrangement I made, I hated it. It told me not to go in that direction. Shark teeth. Triangles have an element of threat and anger in them. I wanted to make something peaceable and quiet with triangles. I wrote awhile and between sentences would sometimes shift focus to finding a composition for the triangles and rectangles, using shadow the number one consideration. Eventually, I put two rectangles cut at the same angle together and stood a long triangle between them on its edge. The standing triangle would cast a triangle shadow to right or left. Made another and put them side by side, at this time seeing two larger rectangles, planes for the shadow to fall on. Side by side, I saw the comedy/tragedy masks. Arranging the incline of the rectangular faces with Picasso noses made by shadow, I began to see body language relationship as one sees in photographs of couples. Sometimes the heads lean toward each other, sometimes away from each other, sometimes one leans toward the other and the other's head is straight up or leans away.

another view

I see the nature of their relationship in photos of couples, which led me to give the rectangles a body language association with one another. The one that came to mind was the incline of the heads in a photo of my mommy and daddy when I was one. His right arm was around her waist pulling her to him. Her head was inclined rather sharply away from him. His head was straight up, angled slightly away from her. Their entire marriage was illustrated in one photograph. I chose the inclination of the masks in relation to one another from their pose, photo taken by her mother. The photograph strikes me primal when I see it. It's the same feeling I see in the rectangular wooden shapes I call masks. The long triangles make such obvious noses, the eyes and mouth are easily implied. I first thought of painting simple lines for mouths, but felt it was the first step toward complex, and withdrew the thought. I like, too, that from a distance it suggests two rectangular objects were placed on a piece of wood or cardboard to be spray-painted white. They were lifted and taken away leaving the two rectangular shapes surrounded by white, negative space, positive space. I like that the wood is raw and will change color over time. I did not set out to make masks, which makes it all the better. It's just that mask is what I saw in a particular arrangement of the parts. They are shapes independent of the idea of mask. I think of Marcel Janco when I see them, the Romanian Dadaist in Zurich who made masks. I'm happy with the association. Where influence is concerned, I see Jean Arp, French Dadaist in Zurich, more than any other. Every Arp I've seen in a museum I felt was holy, the way someone of the Russian Orthodox faith might see an icon.      

rocks for weight while the glue dried

I think I like it better with the rocks. Wanted to find a way to fix the rocks in place -- what it would take, I'm unable to do. Thought it would be fun to paint or draw. The rocks give it a Japanese flavor, a visual haiku. I've rested much of Saturday, rose reluctantly from a long nap to take grain to the donkeys. Going out the door, Jack brayed and I sang back to him. He will bray longer when I sing with him. We had a good one going. Jenny watched us closely like she was enjoying our song. I'd like to encourage Jenny, somehow, to join us with her bray, a high-pitched squeal. I believe the day will come she will join us. I'll talk with her about it in the morning at carrot time. No need to drive anyplace all day. I'd made something that satisfied my aesthetic. Celebrate with a good nap, sleep as long as I can. I carried in the new bag of grain returning from the empty mailbox I was hoping a book would be waiting for me to dive into it. No race this Sunday. And everybody else is doing Easter. A free day. Time to give some thought to next project. Time to read in the 150th anniversary book-sized selection of articles from the Nation magazine, a welcome bonus for the subscription. I'm thinking about watching Pink Flamingos. Haven't seen it in several years. It feels like a good time for a slap-stick gross-out. It's the nature of the news every day. It's not like John Waters will be a shock to the system. I will celebrate a commercial-free Sunday as quietly as I did Saturday. 

   

portrait of the artist by vada

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REBEL WITHOUT A PAUSE

marcel janco

Another cold night and day to freeze a crust on yesterday's snow, the surface melted slightly by the sun, froze overnight. I had to poke holes in it with the walking stick each step and punch holes in it with my shoes. Don't have boots. I wear heavy shoes and heavy socks. Getting a grip with feet in today's condition of the snow was easier than in the fresh snow. The crunchy surface adds traction under the shoes, like tiny bits of gravel. Forecast says Friday the temperature will be above zero. Must go to one hardware store to buy sunflower seeds for the birds and squirrels, and another hardware store for a bag of sweet grain for donkeys. They need the nutrition especially now to warm themselves on the inside through the zero night. Earlier today, I stepped into their den, spreading new hay at the opening so they can stand out of the wind in the morning to graze before I get up. A few days ago I spread old hay on the floor and already they'd wet it down good with piss and continue the mound of donkey biscuits in the middle and against the back wall. I can't help but see it's the way they want it. It has become such a pattern I can see it is conscious, they know what they're doing. It was actually warm in there. Smelled like a donkey toilet, identifying it home for them. It keeps the place warm, makes good insulation to retain their own heat. I feel a little bit better about them tonight and tomorrow night. The forecast for Thursday night, not only below zero, but big wind too. If the donkeys and I are fortunate, the wind will blow above my little valley between ridges. If we're unlucky, the wind will fly out of the east directly into the donkey den. If it comes out of the west, it will blow through my house like it was a screened porch. The wind currents in this small valley go every which way, in circles. One minute it will be coming from one direction, and the next minute from another direction, on and on like that. If I'm really unlucky, one or more of the big white pines near the house could break about half way up the trunk.

marcel janco (find the donkey)

I've learned to trust the elements over years of experience. Like I trust the donkeys not to kick me, I trust weather on the mountain not to damage my interests. I have a relationship of trust with my mountain like I have with the donkeys. I love my mountain and it loves me. My mountain knows I respect it. I am the mountain's keeper in this time of my life. I sometimes suspect the mountain, itself, wanted me here and drew me like a mystical vibration. It was like as soon as I was open to the spirit the mountain began the process of pulling me to it. Whether or not this is the case, it is how I feel the connection with the mountain I have spent my life here learning. I have not done it in several years, but am able to go within and connect with the mountain, have conversation with it, ask it questions and it gives me answers. I asked it once about Tom Pruitt, who was the last of the mountain people on the mountain, asked about the mountain's relationship with Tom. The mountain said there was none, Tom did not respect the life force of the mountain. This is the Tom who, instead of putting a fence around his garden, sat in an upstairs window with a .22 rifle in the gloaming and belly-shot deer that came into his garden, so they'd go off someplace else and die. Tom had little respect for the living. One of the first characteristics I saw in Tom, getting to know him, was the passion he had for killing. It was culture, not just him individually. The mountain told me it appreciated my respect for the living beings of the mountain, the squirrels, the trees, the ferns, the rocks, the ground, the mountain itself. Since the time of our communication, I feel like my mountain is a conscious being. Saying my mountain, I don't mean possession. I mean like my friend. At the same time I feel nurtured by the mountain, energized, my battery charger, I also feel protected by the mountain. I feel like the mountain looks after me. I don't kill anything, rather regard all the beings on the mountain my neighbors. Like trustworthy friends, we've got each other's back.

marcel janco

My vision of the direction USA has been going throughout my lifetime, fascism, is here, now. Any attempt to defeat it, reverse it or change it would be at the peril of becoming a martyr nobody ever heard of. Lillian Hellman's Julia. Can't organize, the FBI infiltrates first sign of organizing, sets everybody up for arrest and all go to prison on "conspiracy" charges, for which there is no legal defense. Demonstrate and cops beat the hell out of me, pepper spray, tear gas, real bullets, arrested if I survive and tormented in jail. Police state is so tight and propaganda so sophisticated, rebellion doesn't work in America. I learned this in the Sixties. I have found in my lifetime the only rebellion that works is non-cooperation, what I call the boycott of one. I don't like that Coca-Cola Corp hired death squads in Columbia to kill union activists and their families. I don't buy Coke products. I dislike everything about Walmart; I don't give them my resources. I don't "buy into it." I don't like paying to the military machine, so I have kept income all the way along in the zone that pays no income tax or very little. People that want to fight the tax system end up in prison. I don't want to go to prison, so I live on the very least possible, inside the poverty zone, and pay no taxes, except sales taxes, which do not go to military domination of the world. Sales taxes are state and local. I'd be happy to pay federal taxes, too, if two-thirds of it did not go to the Death Star. Living frugally is my rebellion. It is the only rebellion I have access to that works. It works for me, and I'm the one it matters to. I think of the people who spend a fortune in legal fees and go to prison over refusal to pay federal taxes, and see them not committed to their belief. It's simple. Just live below the poverty line and you don't pay taxes. One man cannot defeat the Death Star, unless you're in a Hollywood movie. I've often thought, if federal government knew my mind, I'd be locked away in solitary confinement for subversion. Like my daddy told me, "I ought to hit you for what you're thinking." I laughed inside. If he knew what I was thinking, he'd have killed me in a passionate rage and never regretted it, no matter what the consequences.

marcel janco

Rebellion has been the nature of my life. Rather than fight back at an oppressor looking for any moment's opportunity to pound me into the ground, I learned to let these foster parents take care of my needs until I'm able to make a living on my own after school. By the age of ten, both had become foster parents. The kid had no recourse. I turned within, followed orders and waited for time to pass. In my time I went as far away as land allows, like an arrow shot from a bow, the string pulled all the way back to the tip of the arrow. Released, I was gone, and gone forever. I knew the flight was not from mad, but from a lifetime of anger so intense I'm surprised I couldn't bend spoons by looking at them. After Navy and college, I learned government is not here for me; I'm here for government. It's the same with the economic system. I have to give up me to play the money game. I am more valuable to myself than money. I don't want to be a success in the money world. I want my success to be inside myself. I want my success to be who I am, not what I am. By who I am, I don't mean a nice guy. I mean I can practice my art expression any way I want, independent of the art-market world. Fame and money have no value for me, What I mean by who I am is able to take an interest in what interests me, not toward making money for somebody else. I saw the equation that we choose time or money. Can't have both. I chose time. Recalling a dream from childhood. It was before I was old enough to drive. I was driving a car on a dirt road at night, came to a fork in the road, did not know which one to take to wherever I was going. In the headlights I saw standing in the grass of the Y the roads made, a white owl. It looked at me and flew down the road to the left. I took this to mean it was my road and turned that way. I was reminded of the dream some years later when I read Good Soldier Schweik. At the end, he was walking with a regiment to war in WW1. A fork in the road. The regiment took the road to the right. Schweik saw some flowers up the road to the left and he took the road to the left, called by the flowers, by life. 

marcel janco, himself

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