NEW THINGS FROM SCRAPS

sunrise over marsh

by tj worthington

Finished a new piece this morning, can't stop looking at it. Not that it blows me away with beauty, not at all. I stare at it because it works and I don't know why. I do know why. It worked in my mind's eye before deciding to put the parts together. Finished, it doesn't look like what I saw and it does. Since naming it, Sunrise Over Marsh, I only see the circle as sun and the sticks as marsh grass. The name came from what it suggested to me, finished. In process, I wasn't thinking anything like that. The board had a big circle. I wanted to put something in the circle, maybe a section of a painting I never finished, a portrait, a collage, all of which made my deciding mind scream, No! Among the visions that appealed was leaving it empty, letting it feature the wall it hangs against. The wall is all the way around the rectangle, why not inside the rectangle too. Let it include the wall, even feature the wall. Visions of possibilities happened in my head like a slide show and nothing suited. I wanted it abstract, not an image. I went into what I call the junk room, the place I keep parts to pick from and tools. I have some pictures in frames leaned against the door frame on the left. I've leaned some thin sheets of wood there that I'm saving toward using for jigsaw figures. 

sunrise over georgia marsh

by jim kundell

My foot inadvertently kicked the sheet of thin wood, it slid to the floor, I cussed, turned around to pick it up, saw two more things slid down with it. One was an old, dusty from dehydration, brittle print of Whistler's portrait of Thomas Carlyle. I had taken it out of a frame rescued from going to the dump a decade ago, gave the frame to Crystal to brighten up and use. Behind the print on the floor was a thin sheet of wood, which had been in the frame behind the print. There it was. I'd forgotten it. It was old and dry, tung oil would bring it to life, and it just happened to be the perfect size to fit the hole. I sought no further. It was what I wanted in the circle and didn't know it, didn't dare imagine I could find a thin sheet of wood with good grain big enough for the circle. I don't know the wood, suspect oak. Oak was cheap in the time the print was framed, I'm guessing early 20th century, Thirties maybe. Between the wars. I like the balance of circles with straight lines. The vertical sticks to the right were put there because I liked them there. Initially, I wanted them two to three inches longer at top and bottom. 

snrise over marsh

by antonio frasconi

Time to glue the sticks down, one maple, two walnut, it came to me how vulnerable they would be. They would be fine hanging on a wall. But the thing won't always be hanging on a wall. It will be handled by people other than me. It may have a time in storage, in an attic or basement. It is a natural law, if they can be broken, they will. I sawed them to the length of the plywood plane. I prefer it the other way, but can't let it go out of the house with certitude at least one of them will be broken. I wanted them for vertical lines primarily. That they stick out over the edge at both ends gave it something I liked. It was even exciting. It is better to have the parts contained inside the rectangle. I've seen how paintings are handled in the back rooms at exhibitions. They must be break-proof. It still carries original vision self-contained. The vertical sticks and the circle inside the rectangle are in relation to each other, lines. It was after it was done and propped up on a portable easel to look at it completed, I saw the sun and marsh grass. Once seen, I couldn't even force another suggestion. It's what I see. The woodgrain inside the circle even suggests a marsh scene below and clouds above. 

jupiter rising

by tj worthington

Like in the making of Jupiter Rising, the suggestion of the hole a planet or a star, a heavenly body, was one of many ways I could have used the circles. Did not want to do planets, felt it too obvious to the point of cartoon. In the African padauk with straight, tight grain horizontal, deep rust orange, I saw Jupiter on the horizon in a telescope through the earth's ring of pollution. Among the first round of scraps I brought home from Chris's shop, these sticks of walnut an inch and a half by half an inch. Two were the same length. I wanted to use three lines with the circle. It has to do with visual feeling, nothing arcane. The shorter stick of the three was as long as the plane of plywood was wide. I did not want to cut any of the sticks. I played with them like blocks, dividing the plane like Mondrian with horizontal and vertical lines on white. They fell into the shape of a Japanese torii. I liked it. It fit the space perfectly. I also saw a rectangle divided into four rectangles, a circle in one of the rectangles. Three simple lines and a circle. It suggests seeing Jupiter rise through a torii. I'm happy with the suggestion. Especially because it was not the intent. The suggestion does not overwhelm for my eye that it is three sticks and a circle. The suggestion makes it somewhat cartoony, and that's ok. It continues to be three sticks and a circle in a rectangle. 

torii

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THREE NEW TSHIRTS

jean arp

Reminded again of the imperfection of perceptions, it has happened that the missing geode, Quan Yin's head, became a symbol of my talent for not seeing what I'm looking at. Psychological tests tend to be about interpretation. I don't read facebook article comments. They just make a jumble of chaos. One makes a convincing case that the one writing the article doesn't know what he means, the next one says it's the best ever, the next a string of insults, and sometimes one whose point of view matches mine, so what. I like about facebook that I see what is important to my friends in the posts friends put up. A few I think about blocking for putting up so much fascist propaganda, but don't do it, can't turn my back to somebody I like over his/her political opinion different from mine. Their opinions are equally inert and ill-informed as mine. I'm recalling a moment in the coffee shop a few years ago. I was at the bar talking with a woman I found extraordinary, enjoyed talking with her wit and intelligence. She was passing through and I was wishing she lived here. A time came I began to get a drift she was from the far right and adamant. I realized a time will come, before very long, she'll deduce I'm an anti-fascist. The moment I realized she would reject me for having different thoughts and experience from hers, I lost interest in her. I said, "It's time I tell you I'm a liberal." She swiveled around on her stool, put her back to me and didn't say a word. I had to control the compulsion to laugh out loud.

jean arp

Had summer tshirts custom printed today. Bought three black tshirts from Gil Thadani at Gil's Jeans n Things. Gil is one of my favorite people in Sparta. He's from Poona, India, the same city Meher Baba was born and grew up in. Gil came here from San Francisco, Hong Kong before SF, and India before Hong Kong. He married a Sparta girl who was in San Francisco when he was and came back to Sparta with her, raised a family of several kids, put them all through college selling clothes in Sparta. I buy all my clothes from him. One, I like to do all my business in Sparta, except for books and cds. And I like to support my friends. I feel like when I buy something, I am offering support to whoever I'm buying from. I'd rather give my money, energy, to individuals I appreciate than to corporate box stores with employees so poorly paid and richly disrespected they act like they're dead, corporations that rape every town they move into. I bought the tshirts from Gil and today took them to Crystal to print them. In white letters, one says, dissident, another says, insurgent, and the third says, the Seduction, my favorie punk band. She printed them and we had a good time visiting. This is my summer wardrobe. The fun in it is nobody but a very few will know what they mean. Though Daniel is from here, whose band is the Seduction, no more than a dozen people in the county ever heard of it, and them family. 

jean arp

I had not realized it before, but it is habit to look when I get home from town and park to see if Quan Yin's head is in place. Birds knock it off the rock it stands on fairly often. I'm experienced looking for it. Home from town, see her head is missing, I'll search for it before going to the house. I feel like it belongs in place. I understand a geode is a powerful energy, the reason I've not had this one sawed in two. I feel like that does harm to the energy. Like a nautilus shell. I have two, one that is striped and one a pearl shell. They look like shells. In a Myrtle Beach souvenir shop I found among the shells some sliced nautilus shells. They were pretty, but had lost their energy and color. They'd turned a dead gray. I wanted one, but realized in the moment shells must have some energy in them. Cut one into slices and it dies. Quan Yin's head is safe. When I leave the body, next time the geode falls to the ground no one will pick it up. It will roll under a fern or daffodil leaves, or it could be anywhere on the ground and no one will see it. It will seep into the ground, covered year after year by autumn leaves and may never be seen again, went home to the earth, just another rock in the ground. I feel a connection with the geode in that way, that we will both go home at about the same time. 

jean arp

Another art project is in motion. This one, like the one before, is made of scraps from Chris Durgin's woodworking shop where he's now making guitars. He was cleaning up the shop and put some sticks of wood by the woodstove to burn them. He let me look through the pile. I took at least half of it. Today he had a bigger pile for me. I loaded it all into the backseat of the car and there it stays. A great collection pieces of exotic woods, small chunks, slices, square dowels three and four feet long. Pieces of walnut, and some I cannot name. And there was a slab of a certain kind of pine with a beautiful grain that swirls. It is coffee table size. Thought I'd let Justin and Crystal have it, if they want it, to make a coffee table for the mancave or to sell. It is old and dry. Brought home some nice wood to add to my parts inventory. A mess of treasures. These two most recent projects feature beautiful wood. One is about two and a half feet by two feet, a big circle cut in three quarters inch plywood, the circle a foot and a half diameter. It so happens I have a sheet of thinly sliced wood found in an old picture frame with a print of Thomas Carlyle painted by Whistler. I took it apart to give the frame to Crystal to fix up and use as she will. This thin slice of wood not quite an eighth of an inch has beautiful grain in this old, dry wood. Some tung oil brought it to life. Glued onto the back, it fits the circle like it belongs there. Looks like the planet Jupiter with the grain horizontal. A ways yet to go. I can play with wood colors and grain now, make fun things never known before on earth.      

jean arp himsel

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IN CHRIS DURGIN'S WORKSHOP

chris durgin

I dropped in on friend Chris Durgin earlier in the day to make video of him working on a resonator guitar. A young talented musician is putting it together with him, Justin Willey, who picks bluegrass with his dad, Jerel, and his uncle Joe. They are not afraid to make music. When they pick, it's music you hear. Justin likes playing Chris's guitars. He has been playing resonator guitar, Dobro being a brand name, and talked with Chris about helping him make one. Chris's skill and Justin's knowledge of working with wood, which he does for work. He works in a cabinet making shop with his uncle Joe. Justin picked the wood he liked, beautiful, broad stripes of grain. The wood is from a tree of northern Australia, a tropical mimosa, albizia lebbeck, Woman's Tongue. It has leaves like a mimosa, flowers like a mimosa, the tree itself shaped like a mimosa. Chris and I questioned how it came by the name Woman's Tongue. We deduced a suggestion might be in the leaves. I was reminded of a long-leaf house plant, the Mother-in-law's Tongue, long and pointed. I remembered a story from the past of an old preacher who said in the pulpit one day his wife could stand to have about ten inches cut off the end of her tongue. He was referring to an old saying that a gossipy woman had a long tongue. His wife divorced him. They were living in old-time mountain tradition where you don't get a divorce, certainly not a preacher's wife. She meant business. I knew the old boy. He wasn't much in the pulpit.

chris durgin

Chris is making guitars, acoustic guitars for serious musicians. He is wanting to make a dvd of video made from him putting the guitar together he's working on now, step by step all the way to completion. A couple times a year a local arts group has a day of people driving from artists studio to studio around the county. Chris has a bluegrass band jamming, refreshments, talk with Chris, see his shop. He wants to have video on the tv of him putting the guitar together, a day at a time. We started this project with an unclear vision of what we wanted to do. We fumbled about. I was waiting one day for him to tell me when he wanted me to start the video when he said, Don't get this. So I didn't. When he'd finished he asked why I hadn't made video. I said, You said not to. He laughed. He meant not to run it while he was cussing. He was having issues with a tight spot and let go a streak. He meant, don't record that. We realized we need to communicate better. Without even talking about it, we agreed we'll communicate better in a split-second and we were flowing together. I saw what we were doing visually. I got it. He got whatever he saw for himself. Today's filming I had a feel for the flow of what we were doing and followed his hands sanding the edge of the recently glued binding all the way around. I stayed with him until he wore himself out. I move around with the camera, take a digression and examine the wood grain up close, follow the curves, watch the rhythm of his hands with the sandpaper. At this moment I can smell the sawdust and feel it in my eyes. That's pure suggestion. I don't want to hear what a psychologist would call it.

chris durgin

We started the project unsure of it as a project, though after a few shootings, we have it. For my part, I was unsure of what he wanted it to be. For both of us it was an idea finding its own path. I feel like the moment it came together for me was when I followed the grain of the inside of the side like a track I was driving with a car and followed it up overhead and around. I did it just from looking for a new way to look at the form, a piece of wood sculpture, while he was doing something else. He laughed and said, Yeah, a roller coaster. And it came to me, yeah, a roller coaster. Hesitation fell away to let go and follow the wood. Let the wood guide me. Let the wood be the landscape. Chris doesn't want it to be on him, but on the work. He can be sanding in one spot for a long time. It gets boring after awhile. The rhythm is interesting itself and holds the visual interest, but after awhile, I like to let the camera drift, a technique, or anti-technique, learned from Andy Warhol's 1968 film, Lonesome Cowboys. A horse standing still, the camera looking at the horse's face while story is going on nearby, camera drifts down the horse's neck, to the ground. I like to play with letting the camera meander without my mind involved and see what it finds. Not too much, just something to do for my own kicks. I've got it that what Chris wants me to do is get my kicks with the camera, play wide-open freely and see what happens.

chris durgin

It's not about being good or bad. It's about putting a guitar together, working with the wood. I'm getting acquainted with the grain up close, following its lines, looking at the grain from close and a distance, while being sanded. Now I want to make the wood itself the star, the focal point, the purpose. I know Chris well enough to keep my hands off things in his workshop. Everything is where it belongs for its reason, and fingerprints on wood. Like I've learned to keep my hands off the donkeys because they really don't like hands crawling over them, I've learned to keep my control of my hands in Chris's workshop. And I don't like to be in his way. This makes my camera operating easy for him to work with. I stay out of his way, am able to get up close to his hands and not be a bother. We're flowing together better every day. By the time we're done, we'll be ready to start. Though I feel like the beginning was rough, the results look good. We've been not talking while making video, but today I think we broke that ice. We decided to go ahead and talk. Give it some kind of sound track. I can ask questions about what he's doing. He can give illustrative answers while he's working. He's good at explaining what he's doing. We'll do more talking. Allow conversational talking too. A reality show. Anyone who knows both of us would roll around on the floor in a fit of mirth imagining us at work on a project and calling it reality. I am discovering wood in a new way, seeing deeper into the wood itself. I learn from him telling me what he is doing and why, tells about the wood. I'm getting a good education and having fun too.

chris durgin

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THE RHODODENDRON WALKING STICK

two views of today's finished stick

new rhododendron walking stick

Another walking stick is leaning against the wall to dry after first coat of tung oil. Two days of carving I only whacked my fingers half a dozen times. None of them were blood-letters, just nicks. I've thought about putting a bandaid around the thumb I hit 4 times. It's like wearing gloves putting up barbed wire. In the early years on the farm I'd wear leather gloves to stretch barbed wire. Put on the gloves, stretch the wire, hold it in place, take off the gloves take hammer and staple, hammer it into place. Put gloves back on to handle the barbed wire, then take them off again. There comes a time I stuff the gloves into my back pockets and do the best I could to keep from the scratches being too bad. Old man Tom Pruitt's hands dripped blood after he'd put up a barbed wire fence. He never wore gloves. It wasn't long before I didn't either. A few years ago I ran into hillbilly country singer Raymond Oakes. We talked a little and I noticed the backs of his hands had a webbing of scars that looked made by a spider on acid. Exactly like the back of old man Tom's hands. I said to Raymond, "Stretched much barbed wire?" He said, "Yeah, stretched some helping my daddy." Had I continued with the farm work, the backs of my hands would look like that. I have a pretty fair beginning. They're my tattoos. Now I'm in process of putting new scars on the hands, this time the fingers. Putting protection on the fingers doesn't feel right. It takes away from the raw interaction of the knife and the wood. It feels elemental to me. A tool of only one moving part and a piece of wood. Sharpen knife and carve. I have to call it carving instead of whittling or shaving the wood. It is carving from first swipe of the knife to last. Yesterday I carved the bark off this rhododendron branch that has been dead a few years Today I cleaned it up with the knife, an even more painstaking process than stripping the bark. It's detailed carving and smoothing tiny places. It's an excellent meditation. Focus of attention is close. My fingers are at stake. I have to be aware of every move consciously. 

the stick and the knife

I love carving rhododendron wood. Enjoyed the poplar and dogwood too. I've messed with wood all my life, but it feels like carving these walking sticks I'm discovering wood for the first time. I want to carve different kinds of wood now. I've sawed wood, sanded it, run a planer over it, painted it, but never carved it. Never had purpose. I've never kept the pocketknife sharp for not wanting to cut self using it. Now, for the first time in my life, I am keeping the pocketknife as near razor sharp as I'm able. Cutting wood doesn't seem to dull the blade. It keeps a good edge. It feels sometimes like wood's purpose is to be carved. Again, the giving tree. Suddenly I understand that African masks were carved by people who carved wood, good at it unto masters in later years. I am learning subtleties of using a knife carving wood. There are many approaches to the wood. I kept three prongs at the end that touch the ground for novelty. The idea is to be walking on the ground. It would be excellent footing on the ground. Maybe. I did it because I liked the idea and believe they won't break. I like using the knot where branches leave the main branch for the tip that touches the ground. It won't split. It was fun digging with the front part of the blade between the three prongs pictured above. Every place along the stick where a branch came out, I carved down to a smooth round bump that flows with the shape of the stick. Rhododendron limbs make a crooked line between the handle and tip that is a straight line in the stick's balance. Functionally, it is a straight line, same as a straight stick. But it goes this way and that, which doesn't mess its balance up at all. I hypothesize the bends give it spring a straight stick could not. As I pick these limbs to carve, spring is foremost in my mind. The spring is, essentially, negligible. One thing I see it does is vibrate like a bass string and a straight stick vibrates like a high string. Maybe it is a consideration of resonance, whatever resonates with a given individual. 

the handle after carving off the bark

  

Incorporating the scar in the limb into the stick's design was fun. The hand fits nicely between the knot above and the crook below. It is made for the hand the way a pistol grip is made to fit the hand. The stick hangs straight down from the handle held lightly. I sit here at the desk, the pocket knife lies open to my right. I've learned to admire it for what it can do. I've begun to have a feel for its physicality. It is tool of exquisite design. Folds up, goes in the pocket. Open, it is locked open the same as if it did not have a hinge. It is a Case Sodbuster made  in 1977. I've known of Case knives from displays in hardware stores, heard about them, thought it was one of a few makers of knives. I looked online and found a very long list of knife makers. I'm partial to my Sodbuster. Of all the pocket knives I've carried, this is the one. I like the feel of holding it. It has a good balance. The blade holds a sharp edge, it's practical. One of my friends said one day years ago, "I've never carried a pocket knife." I spoke automatically, "Carry one once and you always will." Don't need it much, but when I do, I need it. It's like carrying a pen. I always carry a pen in my pocket when I go to town. And always regret it when I forget. Don't always need one, but when I forget one, that's the day I need it. All pocket knives I'd ever seen had three blades. It's not like I'm an aficionado of pocket knives. This was the first single blade knife I'd seen. First thought: how practical. I've never used more than one blade on knives I used in the past. Talking with my friend Carole, she has her dad's pocket knife. It was the only thing of his she wanted. After he died, she snitched the knife knowing no one would miss it. It is a Schmidt & Ziegler made in Solingen, Germany. It is the common pocket knife. She said he only used the small blade. Again, I thought: how practical.

the handle finished

Today, carving the stick the second time, I wondered why I am doing this. For enjoyment. I like carving right now. May not two weeks from now, but right now carving is what I'm doing. I may sell them if anybody will buy them and may give them away or both. It's a meditation, not a regimen. I've found sitting with a stick carving on it with a sharp knife requires immediate focus of attention. It clears the mind. I like the focus. The consequence of lifting focus for a second is a sliced finger. Focus keeps my fingers safe. Every touch of the knife requires sharp focus. Earlier today, I was feeling like I wanted to write, wanted to read, wanted to watch a movie, all at once. I picked up the knife and stick, went outside, turned over the five-gallon bucket and proceeded to carve. Turned the radio onto the interview program, Fresh Air, followed by Robin Young, then The World. Good interviewers, interesting people they talk with, and I find The World always interesting. I carve and hear in the air well-educated people talk about interesting subjects. I find that with focus on every movement with the knife I hear what they're saying better whether it's the emergence of ISIS in Iraq or the lives of Tibetan women in India. I like BBC radio at night. They tell a lot of Africa news. Africa has a mystique for me from the Pyramids to the Kalahari. Lawrence Durrell's novels, The Alexandria Quartet, were set in North Africa, Alexandria, Egypt. I think of Africa the world of our origin. I think of wood as one of humanity's great teachers. The other, rock. I could  have been a rock mason in this life happily. I have the same appreciation for rock as for wood. Basic, least moving parts, foundational. And I appreciate the life in the wood. The shape of the wood is its life. Carving away the bark I get down to the beautiful wood, caress it with sandpaper and rub the tung oil into it, changing it from something pretty to something beautiful instantly. Carving on the rhododendron branches I remind self from time to time, this is it, this is basic element.

the first rhododendron stick

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