Support Local Artists!

Today Mary and I were talking about art, how we approach it (take your art, not yourself, seriously), how others seem to approach it , and the short shrift it gets most of the time.

Art, I think, is the first truly human impulse. Back 20, 25,000 years ago, when people had acquired shelter and food, the first thing they did was to paint on the cave walls, and shape bones, wood and stone into images, calendars, totems, musical instruments. Art is necessary.

So why is art so often shoved aside? I agree that basic needs come first, but art is important. Learning about art helps with perception and critical thinking. Art history is interwoven with the history of mankind. Yet arts education is the first to have its funding cut in schools, while athletics are boosted. Public funding for arts is often not only marginalized, but attacked as wasteful and wrong.

Perhaps it is because art is so subjective. One whose idea of art is a calendar by Thomas Kinkaid might bristle at the idea of his/her tax money going toward a modernistic steel sculpture. An Abstract Expressionist might disdain exposure and praise heaped upon someone who emulates Grandma Moses. There is a group that I know of adamantly opposed to all art from the Impressionists onward, and some of the opinions expressed on their website are downright scary. Stylistic schisms aside, I don't think there are many in the arts community in general who think that arts are adequately funded.

Art is everywhere, even though it may not be apparent at first. Art and design - graphic design and industrial design - surround us, fill our homes and workplaces. The lamp on the desk, the carpet underfoot, the toaster, the stapler, the thermostat on the wall, the dishes in the cupboard... teacups and cell phones and letter-racks and picture frames - all are designed by artists. It's not just paintings and sculpture - it's everything around us that is not of 100% strictly utilitarian design. An engineer designed the water pump, but an artist designed the faucet.

Anyway...

For people like Mary and me, though art is deeply important to us, there is no way we can support ourselves with it. I paint and draw; Mary makes exquisite stained glass from original designs, and creates delightful, whimsical paintings, which might fall under"surrealism", but are actually kind of hard to categorize. She also knits scarves and hats from salvaged yarn (unraveling old wool sweaters), and sews purses and bags from salvaged fabrics. They are imaginatively designed and attractive.

Last year I made a handful of hand-painted notecards - overlapping leaves of maples, birch, beech and sumac, painted in their bright fall colors. I made templates after real leaves, traced them on the cards and outlined each leaf in ink before applying glazes of watercolor. Each card took probably close to 2 hours to create. So far I have sold only 6 of them, for a total of $40. Go to any card shop, grocery store, drugstore, bookshop, and there are dozens of cards for $3 each, mass-produced, printed in their thousands. How can I hope to sell these little art-quality cards for anything approaching their real value?

A few years ago I did a pen-and-ink drawing, mostly pointillism, depicting a group of standing stones. It took probably between 25 and 30 hours of work, spread over 3 months, to complete. If I were to charge a living wage per hour for this work, I might have to put a price on it in the thousands of dollars - which, of course, no one would ever pay.

Mary took a painting of 2 pink lady's-slippers, translated it to a form she could cut in glass, and using a mix of new and vintage stained glass, crafted a striking window. She worked on it for many hours, with the most painstaking care in selecting, cutting, grinding, foiling and soldering the dozens of pieces. She is asking $1600 for it, and has not gotten even a sniff of interest. How can she compete with the made-in-China suncatchers and pre-cut stained-glass kits available at the local discount craft store?

A friend of Mary's makes hand-knit sweaters using wool from the sheep she raises. She has the sheep sheared, and the wool spun and dyed to order. She knits by hand sweaters of intricate design, and offers them for sale for between $200-$400. At craft fairs, people may admire her work, but bypass her for the people selling sweaters knit on machines, in yarn bought at Wal-Mart for $1.50 a skein. How can she hope to compete? (She can't, of course; she had to sell most of her flock of sheep, unable to afford to support her craft.)

There is something fundamentally wrong here. People flock to farmers' markets and food co-ops and buy locally-produced produce, eggs and meat. Yet would they choose the work of a local artist or craftsperson over some less-expensive product shipped in from afar? Has anyone really tried to find out?

"Buy Local" is a rallying cry heard often lately, as people become more conscious of their food. I am certainly on board with that, but why is there not as well-marketed a movement for local arts? Why not pay me $7.50 for one of my one-of-a-kind painted cards (cheap at 5 times the price, if you think about it) instead of going to the chain card shop and paying $3 for a mass-produced, printed-in-China card? Why not pay Mary $50 for one of her hand-made suncatchers, and forgo the cheap imported chintzy glass ornament, one of a run of 20,000, made in some soulless factory in a foreign country?

What we need is an arts promotion and marketing movement on a par with the local and organic farming movement. We need to be able to promote and support locally sourced, designed and produced original art and fine handcrafts (no crocheted toilet-paper covers, please!). No cheap materials, no kits, no designs copied from pattern books. Perhaps the local arts/handcraft movement can pair with the local food movement and have Food and Art festivals.

Is there any reason not to promote and support local arts as vigorously as a local berry farm, cheesemaker or bakery? Of course there isn't. So why doesn't someone do something about it? Why don't we do it ourselves?

2010 Official Sick of Winter Day

It is February 25 (Happy birthday, Ber!) and I am officially sick of winter. Last year this day came on January 29, when we got 16 inches of snow, a bitter wind sprang up, and I got the car stuck in the driveway - twice. I had to get down on hands and knees and rake out the snow from under the car with a hoe, then stand and shovel it away. Kneel & hoe, stand & shovel. Kneel & hoe, stand & shovel. Finally I got the snow cleared away, and scattered sand around the wheels, got in the car, and stepped on the gas,, hoping to creep backwards. Instead - flump - sideways, and bogged down again. After another 25 minutes of hoeing and shoveling, I finally got the car out. I was soaked from the outside with melted snow, from the inside with sweat. The cold wind froze the wet edges of my cuffs and collar, my hat fell over my eyes, hands were freezing, glasses fogged and speckled. That was the day I'd had enough.

This year the breaking point has come a month later, because late January and most of February were pretty dry and boring. No extremes of cold, no major storms. While places like Baltimore, Philadelphia and DC smothered under 3-4-5 feet of snow, we had sunshine, light breezes, maybe a stray snow flurry. Sunny south-facing banks grew bare and brown; snowmobile trails were closed, dirt roads started to get soft and rutted. The landscape looked more like April than February.

On Tuesday the 23rd, however, this all began to change. It began to snow early in the morning, on and off in bursts. It snowed all day, but did not amount to much. The snow increased in intensity at about nightfall on Tuesday, and by dawn on Wednesday, there was about a foot of perfect snowball snow on the ground. Throughout the day on Wednesday the 24th (Happy birthday, Lucy!) , the snow came down more and more heavily, and the snow became wetter and stickier, Every twig and every branch was laden, and by the time Dad and I went out at 9.30 to get the tractor, I could hear branches breaking everywhere.

The tractor had a soft tire, so Dad plugged in his little air compressor to pump it up, but it would not run. we both thought that the power line - two linked extension cords running from the house to the barn - had come apart somewhere under the snow in the garden, but what had happened was, in the time it took us to wallow our way up to the barn, the power had gone out.

This was a pickle; now the garage door would not open. Dad had cut a small side door in the garage, but it was blocked from the inside by the wood-planer. Still... it was our only way into the garage to get the old bicycle tire pump, my cellphone charger, and the tools Dad needed to replace a broken shear pin on the snowblower. I shoveled a path to this door, through the snow that had slid off the roof, and Dad and I managed to get the door loose and angled so we could pull it outside. We edged the planer around a little, making room for me to squeeze past it, and I opened the garage door from the inside.

Dad pumped the tire, and I helped him replace the shear pin. He handed me one of the pins - a 5/16th x 2-1/2" bolt - and said, "This is the last one." Gulp. The snowblower eats shear pins like I eat peanuts.

So, Dad cranked up the tractor, and cleared the foot of the driveway, and plowed out around the newspaper box before heading back up the hill. He cleared until just past the garage, then started up toward the house. While I went in the house, in search of a Kleenex, I heard a crunch and a whump from outside, and went out on the step to see what was happening. Dad was hollering something to me, but I could not hear him over the tractor/ he pointed at my feet; I looked down and saw that the step on which I was standing had been yanked at an angle away from the house. It had been buried under the snow (falling at probably 2+ inches per hour) and Dad had not seen it, and had hooked it with the snowblower.

While Dad backed down the hill to make another pass toward the house, I somehow hauled the steps back into a semi-normal position, and then turned to see only half of the snowblower working. It has a 4' wide scoop, with twin spirals that both feed snow in toward the fan in the center, which feeds the snow up the chute. The spiral on the left was not turning, and was piling up with snow. I ran down and shouted to Dad that he had broken another shear pin - leaving just the one in my pocket.

Dad cussed, and drove the tractor over to the garage, to drive out the remnants of the broken pin and install the new one. I asked him what had caused it to break, and he said it had happened when he hit the step. He cussed some more, disgusted.

The snowblower is designed to have shear pins that break. The pins hold the spiral to the shaft that turns them, and should the spiral get jammed - get a stick or rock (or doorstep) caught tight, the pin will break and free the spiral, rather than cause undue stress to the motive mechanism. It's a logical system, but leads to a lot of frustration when the snow you need to plow lies atop a driveway paved with loose stones, and is under trees that tend to drop branches.

We took a break for lunch, and when I went back out to the garage, I found that the foot-plus of snow had slid off the roof and buried the side door to a depth of about 4 feet. I slogged back to the house, got the shovel, and cleared the path of the compacted cement-heavy snow, then climbed into the garage and shoveled out what had fallen inside. I opened the bay door, and then fetched the long roof-rake and went up on the hill (through the more than knee-deep snow that had slipped off the cottage roof) and shook the snow from the Northern Spy tree, which was bend dangerously under the weight.

Back to the house, and into the cellar with a flashlight to fetch Dad's yellow slicker suit from a dusty shelf. He'd gotten so wet during the morning's travails that he'd had to come in for a complete change of clothing, and didn't want to get drenched again. So I helped him dust off the suit and climb into it, put on his big boots, and then slog back through the still amazingly heavy snowfall to the garage. Once there, Dad decided that he didn't want to risk breaking the last shear pin, and so was going to pack it in for the day. I closed the garage and climbed out the side door, wedging the door in place behind me (The door has no hinges or latch yet). Dad drove the tractor up to the front door, and he and I dragged a tarp over it, and left it there.

It was quarter to four by this point, and the house was getting chilly without the heat from the furnace. We have half a woodbox of dust-dry wood - not enough for the night. The other wood is up on the hill behind the cottage, less than a face-cord of old mushroomy wood, heavy with dirt and wet. Not great, but all we had. I was debating whether to take a break, or go get some of this sorry excuse for firewood now, then come in and take off my boots, when - glory be! - the power came back on! Lights, furnace, stove! We all breathed a sigh of relief, and I immediatly shed my gaiters and boots and put on my slippers. Ahh.

Mom turned on the TV, but there was no signal, of course, the dish being full of snow. Oh well - there was no remedy for it at that point in the day. We all sat down to read for the evening - no news, no Olympics, no Ghost Hunters.

At about 5pm, I heard a muffled crack, and the plop of snow hitting the house, and saw, heard and felt a huge pine branch crash just outside the front window of the living room, clipping the roof on its way by. It scared me a bit; the huge pine tree, about 80 feet tall and probably three feet on the stump, leans over the house in a most ominous way, and any time we have heavy snow, wind, or lightning, I almost expect branches or even the entire tree to come smashing down on the house.

That was the last unfortunate event of the day around here; tired, and without the artificial stimulant of TV to keep us up, we all turned in early. By 9.30 I was sandy-eyed, so went to bed and was dead-asleep within minutes.

This morning I was glad to see that no more snow had fallen overnight, and the trees around the house had shed most of the snow from their branches. There was some kind of yuck falling from the sky - rain or slush - but that, at least would not pile up.

After breakfast I shoveled a path past the tractor, went over to the garage and cleared the path to the side door, as the garage door would not open with the remote. Then I trudged to the bottom of the driveway and shoveled out a wide enough path to get the car through the berm of ice and frozen slush pushed off the road by the big plow trucks. That done, I came in and caught my breath, and got ready to go to Derry for those infamous shear pins. Mom handed me a grocery list and stuff to mail, and I set off.

The road was not terrible, but while I was running errands, the snow began to fall, and the road was pretty well covered as I returned home. Getting into the driveway was interesting; I'd had to bull through some pretty deep snow to get out, and gunned the engine to make it up toward the garage.

Later I tried to swing the car around and get it into the garage, but instead got it stuck, much as I had on OSOW Day last year. So, after helping Dad work on the tractor (trying to help, I should say), and after we'd decided that we could not get the broken shear pin out of the snowblower, dad helped me shovel out around the car enough to get it freed from the snow. I backed down the driveway, making some funky tracks as I skewed back and forth in the slushy snow. I parked across the road at the engineers' office, making room for the driveway to be plowed. dad and I then fixed the garage door opener, and went inside, where he called and left a message for Dave, who helps Dad with many chores, and for years plowed the driveway for free.

Half an hour later, Dave pulled into the yard, his big pickup truck and double-winged plow a most welsome sight. he cleared the driveway, pushing huge curls of snow, mud and driveway stones back onto the lawn (it's a ratty lawn - no harm done), then helped Dad change that %^$#%#!#@ shear pin. With the snowblower back in action, Dad cleared the space before the door and then the area in front of the cottage, then plowed a path up to the barn. While he did that, I went to get the car.

The place where I had parked it was really pretty dangerous, in that I could see neither lane of passing traffic, and would have to drive into the road blind. I opted to drive a little way up the road and find a safe place to turn around - had to go about 1/2 a mile before finding a driveway plowed wide enough to offer a view up and down the road. While I was out, I got the mail (the mailbox is pretty well buried, too) then got the car into the garage without incident. Finally.

I then took the compressor back up to the barn, then came back and got walking sticks for Dad, as the driveway is a river of slippery slush. I helped him put the tractor to bed, and walked down with him, and indoors, at last.

The weather is not though with us yet, though. Though the sky only pelted us with rain, sleet, slush and a little spatter of wet snow today, we have another Winter Storm Warning hanging over us - maybe another significant amount of snow - plus a High Wind Warning for tonight (wind ESE 29-40, gusts to 65). The storm will linger through the weekend and into next week. Maybe another foot of snow between tonight and next Monday.

So, this morning while shoveling snow as heavy as sand, with rain and sleet pattering on my hood, my hat sliding over my eyes, glasses fogging up, and mittens beginning to soak through, I felt... how shall I describe it? I felt discontent. In addition to the general inconvenience and discomfort, I was not at work. I don't like my job, but I was not being paid to shovel snow. The paycheck is going to be a little thin next week.

Then a blob of sodden snow dropped out of a tree and hit me on the back. I straightened up with a sigh, wiped the fog from my glasses with a wet finger, and decided that this is the day when this year, I have had it up to here with winter.

I want sunshine, warm breeze, the scent of cut grass, the taste of green beans fresh from the gardens. I want to hear orioles and thrushes and phoebes. I'm sick of snow and slush and wet feet and wet mittens and driving on crappy roads broken-up with frost heaves and slick with snow and ice. I want to drive with the windows open and a baseball game on the radio.

I am officially sick of winter.