Penllyn Studio

I spent the day yesterday driving home from St. Louis on the back roads.  It was, I believe, the most direct route, but took at least four hours longer than a trip on the expressways.  I stopped in at a couple of galleries and frame shoppes and had a great chat with Barb at “The Cellar Urchin” in Bellevue, Iowa. 

Unfortunately, she is closing the doors on the gallery portion of her business soon and moving the framing business up the street.  The economics of high energy prices and old, inefficient buildings seems to be the issue.  That seems to be a common theme as I talk with these business owners. 

I also stopped into a few shoppes in Leclaire too.  The hippie-chick at the antique store will tell you were to get the best chow in town and will let you use the shoppe’s extra pair of reading glasses if you need it. 

Regardless, driving in the Mississippi Valley for all of a sunny day in May has its rewards.  This is especially true when you take the time to stop in, have a chin-wag, and get to know the people who make up the small towns along the way.   With all of that small town gab and pastoral scenery, I’m feeling another barn painting coming on… 

I do enjoy a day in the kitchen.  Mrs. Thompson is out this afternoon and some friends will be coming over this evening with their three small ones.  A little homemade pizza is in order. 

I also thought it would be fun to make an almond-graham cracker crust apple torte with a Parmesan cheese topping.  Never done it… making it up as I go… having fun… could be horrible– WE’LL SEE!

***Next morning***

Highly recommended!  Crust:  1 cup Almonds ground, 1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs, 6 T butter (melted), 1 cup sugar.  Fill: Apples (6 medium), coated in cinnamon sugar, yada yada.  Topping:  1 loose cup of grated parmasen, 1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs, 2T sugar, 2T butter melted.  Break up the pasty concoction over the torte. 

The only thing I would do differently is to lightly simmer the apples before putting them in.  The crust really only needs 10 minutes, but the apples need more time to soften.  I baked for 25.  Served with a bit of whipped cream.  Very well received.

For most of my adult life I have packed up and moved about every three years.  Once we stayed in one place for six years, and that provided my children with a place that they think of as “home”.    Now we have been in this place for more than four and time is starting to bend like a Dali painting.

When you move every three years, events become linked to “the year we move in,” “the year we moved out,” or “the year we were in.”  When you add a fourth, fifth or sixth, the time hangers disappear.  

The Dali painting above is titled “The Persistance of Memory.”  Memory seems to have a way of distorting and shifting reality.  One long walk blends with all other long walks and together they become “the long walks we took when we lived in…”  Like the painting, they have melted, wilted, and warped into a “sense of reality.”

(When I was in college I did a study on this painting, replacing the watches with Statues of Liberty.  Hmmm…)

Discussing this with my bride last night, we concluded that the strongest memories are those that are tied into other senses.  For instance, anyone who has ever served a day in the Army knows what the Army smells like-Brasso, boot polish, and Break-Free.  Smell those things and a flood of Drill Sergeant memories will wash over you. 

These are powerful things, memories. We measure their strength by the emotions they carry.  However, as time warps them, the painfully bad memories become manageable and the good memories grow warm and rich. 

I took the back roads while driving home from Madison yesterday with hopes of seeing something unusual.   I decided on a trip up Hwy 14 through Spring Green and a bunch of other Wisconsin bergs that I’d never been to in hopes of finding a few antique stores and art galleries.  

Spring Green was it’s usual pretentious self.  There must be something about living so close to Frank Lloyd Wright’s place that rubs off on the folks there.  Its as if no one is trusted until they produce a tax statement showing a substantial donation to PBS or the Sierra Club.

But then I came to Richland Center.  This little berg is much more to my liking.  As a county seat, its downtown still has plenty of apparently healthy businesses.  I stopped in at an antique store in the lower level of an old theater and got to chatting with the proprietor. 

As he was pointing out the future location of a new antique furniture store, he demonstrated by pointing out the window.  However, both of our eyes went to a growing dark cloud of smoke above the building across the street.  As an outsider, I wasn’t sure if it was something normal or something to be concerned with–until he said, “what the hell is that”. 

I trotted down t0 the nearest corner to get a better look and saw the first flames of a three story building fire.  At that moment it was still small and limited to the roof.  I saw a woman step onto the third floor fire escape and go back inside.  At this I ran toward the building and, as I go to the nearest corner, I saw her emerge from the first floor entry.  The volunteer fire alarm was sounding as a few others emerged and others still ran in to retrieve personal treasures. 

I watched as the volunteers arrived at the nearby fire station.  They were, at first confused and their leaders were shouting commands that went unheard.  The tower truck didn’t set up where their Captain wanted them to. They instead parked down wind from this quickly growing blaze.  The Captain was able to get a second ladder truck to park where he directed, up-wind and out of the path of potentially falling walls. 

By the time the tower truck began applying water, the flames covered the roof and were, at times, 30 feet high.  I could feel the heat from the ground 100 feet away.  Despite their poor position, the tower truck hit its mark and the flames were gone in a matter of minutes.  What they lacked in early coordination the firefighters made up for in effectiveness.  

I looked around and realized that most of the town’s people were on the street– cell phones held high.  I stopped in at a local gallery and frame shop.  For the next half hour the owner provided the play by play to interested callers wanting to be in the know.

I have to say that the whole string of events left some very strong impressions.  The contrast between the two communities, the way the whole town showed up, the atmosphere of concern followed by relief–all of this will take a while to sort itself out for me. 

We live such closed lives that, for the most part, our only shared experiences happen on television.  In doing so we have become voyeurs of Bridezilla and snoops on Storage Wars.  But then, some real reality brings a town out of hiding and community happens.

I guess I got my wish, yesterday. I saw something unusual.

Yes, I do smoke a pipe from time to time. Yes, I believe that smoking a pipe is an art form unto itself.  And, yes, I also believe that drilling, shaping, smoothing and finishing a smokign pipe is a high form of sculpture.  It must be functional, well constructed, with flawless workmanship–the product of a craftsman but perhaps not an artist.

The few pipes that I have made attempt to add additional elements to the craftsmanship (which, I am admittedly still working to master) in order to move it toward a piece of art.   I work to design within the natural grains of the wood and properties of the other materials.

First:  A standard bulldog shape.   Constructing the classics is a great way to work out the technical aspects of the art.  Pipes are considered best if the wood is not flawed with sand pits, etc.  They are also best if the grain follows the overall design of the pipe.   Note the straight grain going up the side of the bowl and “birdseye” on the top.

Next, a stubby little pipe using a “delta” shape. The delta refers to the top view of the bowl.  Imagine a D shape with the flat(er) side on the face and the rounded part of the D toward the smoker.  This pipe had some strong grain that I worked straight up the bowl.  It also had the nubbley “plateaux” on one spot on the top that I opeted to leave in place.

The front view shows the grain and how the carving line follows the place where it changes from straight grain to birdseye.

As this carving and sculpting in briar wood is still something that I am trying to master, I have included a few photos of other’s works to demonstrate how far I have yet to go.

These are from my personal favorite current Pipe Artist, Steven Downie.  You can see more of his work at DowniePipes.com.

GRT

Came across this pic and thought I’d share it. Its the photo I used for one of my recent works, “Isle of Skye”.

Here are a few that are for future works…  First, another scene from Cambria, WI.

This from Hadrian’s Wall.  This happens to be the same place where the early scenes from the movie Robin Hood (Kevin Costner [who's only good movies involved baseball]) were filmed.

… and from Door County, WI.

Thanks.

G

Most often when people see my work for the first time I am asked this question.  I suppose that I never considered the various compositional lines as forming “windows”, but that is certainly a valid expression for the effect.

It started as a challenge to myself to apply both “improvisational” and ”compositional” abstracts in a single, unified work.  In the world of “improvisational” abstracts I looked to Kandinski, seen here:

For the “compositional” abstracts, I looked to the most pure example, Piet Mondrian.  He focused on works that used black, white, and primary colors arranged in blocks formed by 90-degree angles.  Here is a key example of his work:

As you can see, these are two greatly different styles, but both are abstractions without some recognizable “subject” beyond colors, shapes, light and dark.  The design challenge is to balance these elements within the space.  It was the art of combining the hard edged composition with the free flowing improvisation that captured my attention.  For nearly 10 years I played with this puzzle before I added the element of “subject”.    That was sometime around 1995.  (I’ll add a scan of that first piece as soon as I am able.)

So… about the “windows”.  The lines provide places to shift colors, change the pattern, and make a dramatic statement.  I use them to move your eyes around the piece and allow you to see the bigger “whole”.  Sometimes I use them to draw you into a specific place to see the finer point.  From a philosophical standpoint, the lines in my works represent the order and structure of our universe–that behind the apparent chaos, there is the Creator holding it all together.

Much like Pilate’s question of Jesus, “what is truth?”, so goes the question, “what is art?”  The answer becomes very slippery. 

In the case of “truth”, it is a many-faceted diamond that shines differently, depending on the angle from which it is viewed.  Sometimes it splits the light and casts rainbows across the room while at other times one catches a glimpse of a blue or red or even a solar flash of blazing white.  In each such case, we are only seeing the evidence of the thing and not the thing itself.

Further muddying the waters of understanding “truth”, there is the argument that it is “like ice cream”; that it differs according the preference.  For example, I personally think the Culver’s “German Chocolate Brownie” is the greatest Icy-Creamy treat ever!  You, instead, may argue that Breyer’s Vanilla is, instead, the best ever–and further, that Culver’s isn’t even ice cream, but frozen custard.  We could argue ad infinitum that the other is wrong, but each would be “speaking our own truth.”    It is important to note that in such an argument, what is really being discussed is not a question of “truth”, but one of preference.  In argumentation, one must identify when the question of “truth” or “art” is confused by an unfortunate turn of forensic discourse into simple matters of preference. 

The question of what “art” is suffers these same rocky waters of discussion and debate.  Let us, then, carve our way beyond the questions of preference and begin by understanding what some of the facets are within the understanding of what art is. 

First, some look to “art” as an emotional tool.  Within, it allows a viewer (or listener, or reader….etc) to “feel”.  At various times past it has been considered best when: 1) the viewer was made to feel what the Artist felt; 2) the artist was able to emote regardless what the viewer felt; and 3) it didn’t matter what either felt, just that they felt.”  Examples of each of these can be seen in 1) “The Scream”, 2) anything by Jackson Pollock, and perhaps 3) the compositional pieces of Mondrian. 

Others see “art” as an expression of beauty.  They will point to Monet and Degas and a host of other impressionist and pre-impressionists as an example.  However, one need look no further than the unrine stained cross to understand the short-sighted nature of this understanding. 

Others still see it as a time capsule into past cultures and values.  This undertanding comes closest to how I understand art.  However, simply looking at it as an anthropological study will also leave the viewer lacking the deepest levels of understanding.

I believe (and put forth for discussion) that “art is the manifestation of philosophy.”  I believe that this is a truism that extends from the earliest cave painting through to today.  I further believe that this extends well beyond the visual arts, through all of the written and performing arts.  As a matter of study, I offer that to understand any piece of art, even the most confusing abstract, one must first understand the prevailing philosophy under which the artist was working.   

This is my attempt to get beyond the facet-flashes of the other mentioned understandings to see “the stone” itself.  Underlying all of the universe of “art” is man’s natural creative impulse. This is expressed as it is pushed out through the prism of the driving philosophy of the moment–giving flashes of brilliance, beauty and emotion.

I realize that others will disagree with me on this definition.  I look forward to hearing from them.  As you view my works here, you can know how I understand my own work–understand that this the truth as I know it.  I believe that it is a real truth and not an ice-cream truth.  I challenge you to prove me wrong.

GR Thompson, Feb 2012