Benched Week 74: on all fours

I learned a new formula yesterday: 5 X 4 = Newton Falls.  On my way back from a gig in Cleveland, I stopped by this small town in Ohio for one reason only.  Its zip code is a wonderfully monotonous 44444.

Driving there in the early morning, I determined to photograph five fours, find a bench, and think about my love for typography.



The town cooperated nicely.  After the namesake waterfall, there wasn’t much to see, but that made the hunt for fours more of a delightful challenge.  The single-street downtown was nearly deserted, giving me the freedom to snap away without annoying residents and shop owners.



Imagine my happiness in discovering the temperature.  (I only counted this for one of my shots.  But in my inner ear, I could hear Obi Wan say, "The fours are with this one.")



The other shots came quickly, so I soon found my bench, sat in the sunshine and turned my thoughts toward fonts.



Typography fascinates me.  Think of it, we don’t simply have marks that build together into a language that communicates.  Even the way we make the marks – call it the character of the characters – helps to shape the meaning.  Fancy, plain, funky.  Type comes in many flavors.  And each one adds a layer of meaning before we even read the message.

 

And I’m particularly pleased that hand-written type has made a comeback. On events, I collect comments made to me about my scribing and this week a man said, “Your works reminds me of those signs in Chili’s.”  He meant it as a compliment, referencing the popular chalkboard signs used by restaurants – and this coffee shop.



I’ve found, to my frustration, that the speed of scribing precludes many of the nuances of type.  It’s hard enough to capture content.  Not to mention spelling, as the young creator of this poster must have realized too late.



So, playing with type is something I want make a part of my personal art.  I am, after all, a man of letters.  And to that end, I have an idea for a new series I’d like to here on Facebook, which would involve hand-written content that would be crowd-sourced by friends like you.   I’ll spell it out for you in the coming week.

But for today, I’m just playing the numbers game.  In Newton Falls, fun comes in fours.

Benched Week 73: whose tide are you on?

The sun was rising in its long-slanted brilliance over the Pacific.  I sat on a bench on a bluff high overlooking the gentle waves, watching surfers bob.  Sea lions barked in the distance from their beds of metal beams beneath the long jetty. (I had to go find them later.)



It was the perfect time to sit and ponder the events of the day before, and muse upon the ebb and flow of time.



Being stuck in California for a weekend in early April is no hardship, especially when I had a car (a rare occurrence for me on business trips) and friends to visit.  First up was Jenny, a young mom who I had befriended some years ago through a blogging site we both used.  I had a chance to visit her and her delightful family for a morning, which involved chalking with her young sons.

 

Then, as fortune would have it, an old mentor of mine just happened to live ten minutes from Jenny.  I had stayed in touch with Foster ever since the summer in college I worked with him in the Philippines, but this was the first time I had seen him since then. 



At ninety-five, Foster is a frail, bowed version of the energetic man I knew, but his mind is still sharp and his gentleness and kindness very evident in the way he listened to me and offered his wisdom.  Fos was the first one to put in my head the idea of using art to connect to an audience.  He had forgotten that he had plunked me down in a busy outdoor market in Manila with a sketchpad and pencil.  It’s as clear in my memory as if it had happened yesterday – my nervousness, the press of the people against me in order to see, the laughter and the chatter in a language I didn’t understand.  It didn’t go particularly well that day, but an idea was planted in my mind.



In a way, each generation is like a wave.  We swell.  We crest.  We make our splash and recede.  But the very act of receding feeds the next wave.  I think about that in this area of encouraging creativity.  Fos did that for me.  I hope to do that for Jenny, for McKenzie, the young artist at the church where I scribed the next morning, and for others as I have opportunity. 

Including you.  You take the time to read this blog and I sincerely appreciate it.  I think about you every time I write: that my thoughts could be the wave that feeds your imagination, whether you just ride it for the few moments you read this, or if you let it feed own creative expression.

That’s why I post.: so we can make some waves.

Benched Week 72: picture this

Do you know what is hard about these bench-sittings? (Besides the majority of the cushionless benches.)  It’s conveying even simple concepts concisely.

Like cold.

How do I best describe the body-clenching temperature of downtown Milwaukee today?  Should I mention that both the cab driver and the housekeeper on my floor of the hotel described the city with that word, pronounced: COLLLLLD.

Or do I show a photo?  But what photo can depict something invisible?

A frozen river?



Or this simple detail I found in an alley?



Imagine how much harder this task becomes when the concept becomes complex, like...

...people.

As I sat in the small art museum on the campus of Marquette, two pieces spoke to me about how to visually portray the inhabitants of a very specific time and place.  They couldn’t have been much more different in their approaches.
_______________________________________________


This photo of Dublin, Ireland, taken by Robert Von Sternberg, is far more subtle than a simple point-and-shoot.  Notice how the smiling older siblings and father are cut off.  The younger kids seem a bit dazed by the commotion, but the camera – viewing them from a child’s height – makes them the center of the scene.  Dirty, confused, but the heart of the moment. 
_______________________________________________


Then there’s Abert Birkle’s Street Scene, Berlin.  More fanciful, even a bit grotesque, it imagines a collection of people who embody Berlin in the early 20th century.   No one smiles in this grouping.  Misshapen faces and outstretched hands convey sadness and isolation.  Or perhaps longing.
_______________________________________________

Both speak volumes to me about a single thing: community. We wish for it, but in our age of remote connecting, we find it becoming more and more elusive.  Maybe we’re like the children, left out by a laughter we don’t quite understand.  Or maybe we’re surrounded by others who share our longing, but we don’t know how to break down the isolation between us.

Community.  Now there’s a tricky concept to convey.

It will take more than art to do that.

 

Benched Week 71: framing our differences

I am standing in front of a painting of a city bridge with my artist son.  This has caught his eye, I think in part because it reminds him of this city he has adopted.   I ask him what he likes about the painting.  He comments on the colors in the shadows, the details, the rendering of the people.  I observe how the artist breaks up the strong vertical of the smokestack.  It is good to view it together.  To see it differently.



This trip to Pittsburgh is for just this thing: to hang out with Nathan and slowly let observations on life roll out as they will.  The bitter cold (minus 3 on the way here) has driven us inside.  But we have, for a long time, wanted to visit an art museum together.  This is the perfect chance.

Here I find my bench.  And my muse embodied.



Nathan and I are quite different in our approach to art.  And he frames that contrast in a way I had not considered.  He makes the distinction between a hobby and a project.  He is a hobbyist.  Art for him is an ongoing, open-ended exploration.  Art for me, he thinks, is more about completing projects: there is a goal and finite length.  Once completed, a new project arises.

It’s a simple contrast, but I recognize the truth in it.  I am drawn to projects.  Like this blog.   Like my winter doodles.  Like a new idea I have for drawing simple portraits of “winter walkers” – people bundled up in layers of clothing, sketched from quickly-captured reference photos during my travels.



And suddenly we have our middle ground.  We share stories of how hard it is to take photos of people in public.  I tell of the older woman in a park who pointedly asked me if I liked taking photos of children.  He recalls the person who ran after him to get him to delete the shot he had just snapped.  It’s fun to share stories from the trenches.



Near us, a small class of children is sketching an object on display.  It pleases me enormously to see this, for it reminds me of the times I took my kids to do the same.  And it makes me think of how my children are the biggest project I’ve undertaken.  But for all parents there is a line where the noun project can become a verb.  Across that line, we begin to project on our offspring our own unfulfilled dreams.  Or, in my life, an approach to creating.

And I’m thankful that Nathan has discovered such a refreshingly different way to make art – seen in the angular planes of wood he paints, but also in his hobbyist’s enthusiasm.

How good it is to have a fresh pair of eyes.  And a new framework.

Benched Week 70: flames to fan

If ever a room needed a bench, it would be an art room.  As I have learned, benches are the perfect place to think, to observe, and to sketch.  At least, that’s what I told middle school students this week.

And since this particular art room didn’t have one, I assisted the art teacher in lifting a bench from the school lobby.



Dawn is an old friend.  Up until my schedule became too demanding, I came in six times a year to teach a simple watercolor class to seventh graders. 

Over the fifteen years of those lessons, she and I talked much about art and teaching and kids.  She’s passionate about all three.  I knew she’d be game with my odd seating request.

I went in twice this week to meet with the Art Clubs.  It was a treat to show my work to young artists who are intent on pursuing their own creativity and skill.

Day One: I showed slides of my art and answered questions, telling the students that the one thing they could do to become more creative is to buy a small notebook to carry with them and write down or sketch what they observed.  As fun as the hour was, I walked away thinking I had lost an chance to co-create with them.  Tomorrow, I thought, I’ll change that.

Day Two:  I raced through my presentation, fielded a few questions then turned the tables on the kids.  “You’ve asked me about my art,” I said.  “Now I want to know about yours.”  I directed them to two large sheets of paper with a simple question.

Without hesitation, they spent the remainder of the time drawing and writing their answers.  Roaming the room behind them, I realized that as fun as this was to watch, I had still missed the goal.  We weren’t co-creating.  I was a bystander.

But maybe something more important was in play.  Perhaps my most important role in these two brief hours was one of cheerleader for creativity.  To applaud that innate spark of a desire to capture our view of the world visually – a spark we all had as little children but only some fanned into flame.  I suppose it was my turn to wave that fan for a few kids.

The girl drawing this came to me on the second day and told me, “I went home last night and had my mom take me out to get a small sketchbook.  So I can do what you said.”

It made me smile.  I guess I’ll have a tiny supporting role in her life of creating going forward.  Sometimes the best collaboration is to encourage – then watch what happens.





Something a great teacher like Dawn could have told me.

Benched Week 69: getting my docks in a row

There are two things that strike me about January.

The first is the cold.  Lately, it’s been a literal striking, as I vainly tried to outlast its pummeling on a bench in Brooklyn.

And in Bethlehem, PA, I didn’t even try.  I mean, look what it did to this woman.

Today, walking along the shoreline park in Chicago, it seemed like only the geese and the joggers were willing to join me in the stiff wind that sliced through my winter coat.
 

It made me empathetic for this sculptural captain, who I was dressed like, except my ski cap made me more of a common sailor.

The second thing that stands out to me about January was brought to mind when I found my bench looking out over an empty marina.  Without all the boats, the rhythmic geometry of the structures can be seen.  When the weather warms and the boats all come back, that simple overview will get lost in all the colors and movement and people.  Life will get in the quay.

January is like those docks.  It’s when we can see a line-up of the months to come.  The calendar awaits all the hand-written activities (in our house, only in black pen, please).  January is when we can clearly see the structure before, like at the marina, all the hubbub moves back in.

Hey, ships happen.

It’s fashionable to dislike resolutions.  I’m not sure how the tide turned on those.  I like to christen the launch of each new year with a personal slogan, something to keep in mind while the view of the docks is still clear.  This year’s rose out of lessons learned from last year’s bench-sittings: Watch for the small things.

Each day, regardless of the larger activities that may dominate, there are small moments that are worth paying attention to and investing in – passing conversations, small gestures, chance interactions with strangers.  I want to catch more of them.  And when I can, include a bit of writing or drawing.

Take this drawing I left for Diana, the housekeeping cleaning my room in Brooklyn.  She left a note afterward saying she would frame it.

Come to think of it, it touches on both of those January distinctives.  Small gestures and the warmth they bring.

Benched, Week 68: the smallest strokes

Sometimes, it’s not about what you write, but how you write it.

I hadn’t planned on posting during our family’s pre-Christmas trip to Williamsburg, but there I was, on a bench inside the Visitor’s Center, waiting for Alison and Grace to finish their shopping for something to remember the beauty of the season in colonial times.



Across from me sat a lonely Ben Franklin.   In front of him, three quill pens angled out of an inkwell like an emaciated headdress. Books, CDs and business cards filled out the table around him.  Ever the entrepreneur, that Ben.



“Book signings can be lonely vigils,” I commented.

He agreed.  And just like that, we began swapping stories of promoting our work, presenting in schools and finally, our interest in handwriting.

Ben’s alter ego was Mike, a former homicide chief detective from Baltimore.  In his retirement, he had discovered a fascination of old-style penmanship.  He was eager to demonstrate.

Dip.  Shake.  Scratch.  The pen moved carefully over the paper.

As he wrote, he informed me that a flourish was added below to keep someone else from turning a signature into a promissory note.  (“Ben Franklin… owes Bruce Van Patter a dozen Ben Franklins.”)



When he finished, I tried my hand at it.



It probably comes as no surprise to you, gentle readers, that I love lettering.  A good pen is like a found treasure.  I regularly study new typefaces, reveling in the nuances of different tails, legs and bowls.  (Type-geek speak, sorry.)  I seek to flourish in flourishing.

But more importantly, I’ve found that purposeful lettering is one of the simplest ways to add a little delight to someone’s day.  Recently, I’ve been taking an extra couple of minutes to fashion a note to housekeeping in hotels.



It’s a good analogy to hold onto as we peer expectantly into the new year.  Grand acts of kindness have their place, but cultivating a regular practice of little, regular gestures of unexpected grace may be more impactful.  For me, it could be a hand-written note to a stranger or lettered verses, specially selected for my wife and kids as a Christmas morning surprise.

To stroke the right note: a small thing with a big potential to bless.