Benched Week 57: a signature thing

Meet Fred.  He is, by his own description, the foremost expert about the town of Chagrin Falls, Ohio.  It was my luck to have found him on a bench along Main Street, not far from the falls themselves.

I had chosen the town by its evocative name on a map.  And when a little research revealed it to be the hometown of Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes, I knew it would be the perfect bench-stop on my drive home from Cleveland.

Sitting down with Fred, I asked him how long he’d lived in the town.  “It’ll be forty years any minute now,” he answered.  He said he’d never contemplated moving somewhere else. I could see why.  It had distinctive old houses in quiet neighborhoods and a quaint downtown with reminders of its past.

 

Really, how many towns can boast of a popcorn store?

When I told a friend recently that I’d be stopping by Watterson’s boyhood town, he suggested I look for a toboggan run.  It struck me how memorable his creation was that we could both instantly picture C&H flying off some snowy hill.  Watterson himself credits this partially to the fact that he stopped at the height of its popularity.  It was his signature work.  He felt it was finished.  So he walked away.

What is your signature thing – that defining work, that effort you can put your name proudly to without a hint of chagrin?

For Fred, it was being his town’s memory-keeper, the conversational touchstone to Chagrin Falls’ communal past.  He knew the town.  The town folk all knew him.

What is my signature thing?

In a literal sense, signatures are not usually my thing at all.  I very rarely sign the corporate art I do.  Except for yesterday, when in a flight of fancy, I created this whimsical drawing, inspired by the shape of the magnetic whiteboard eraser.  I’m not sure why that called me to sign it.

But maybe that is a clue to my signature work – capturing a moment by creating something quick then looking for the next moment of inspiration.  Make it and move on.

Just like these bench sittings.  I told Fred about how I’m traveling the country, sitting down to connect to a place and its people.  He said, “You’re like a portable Fred!”

Well said, Fred.  That’s an idea I can put my name to.

Benched Week 56: swimming alone

Of all the plethora of Robin Williams quotes I’ve read in recent days, the one that’s stuck with me is this: “I used to think the worst thing in life was to be alone.  It’s not.  The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone.”

That thought hit me while eating a buffet dinner in a huge ballroom in Disney’s Dolphin Hotel, surrounded by thirteen hundred corporate strangers.  It came back to me later when I found my bench along the Boardwalk and watched people strolling by.

Some time after that, I stood on the edge of a crowd laughing at the antics of a street performer. I felt an affinity for him.  We’re both solo entertainers.  He balances spinning balls on top of one another; I spin art and words out of markers.  Both of us are hired to do our specialty alone in front of an audience.




















Earlier in the day, this being a Disney resort, I took a brief dip in one of the pools.  It felt necessary. It was brief because as soon as I submerged, I couldn’t shake the feeling that my family ought to be here. A pool seems superfluous without my daughter to enjoy it with me (and agree with me about how tepid it was).  It made me appreciate those who find a way to manage traveling alone for fun.

My thoughts turned, as they often do on these sittings, toward art.  Why does art need to isolate the artist?  Henry Miller, writer, said, “An artist is always alone – if he is an artist…the artist needs loneliness.”    And another author, Charles Browder, wrote, “The good ideas are all hammered out in agony by individuals, not spewed out by groups.” 

I get it.  There are times, like when one is actually creating, when an artist is likely to be alone. But after a lifetime of an isolating imagination, I’m feeling powerfully drawn to what Brian Henson said of his Muppet-maker father, Jim: “If you asked him how a movie would turn out, he’d say, ‘It’ll be what this group can make, and if you changed any one of them, it would be a different movie.’ Every day for him was joyously filled with the surprises of other people’s ideas.”

Wouldn’t you love to be a part of a collaborative environment like that?  It pulls like a magnetic force on my spirit.

An artist friend, who I recently bumped into on a street corner in Lewisburg, asked me if I’d join him on an upcoming Saturday in drawing dueling portraits of each other.  At first, I wasn’t sure that was my kind of thing.  But now that I’ve spent more time alone in the spotlight, I’m thinking it’s just the thing I need.

It might be fun to swim creatively with someone else for a change.

Benched Week 55: the lessons of three benches

Bench #1

I needed a calm place. Having driven seven hours to New Hampshire, I sought out the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site for a quiet moment or two.  But a testy email from a client rattled me.  I sought a spot where I could soak in nature and perhaps sketch a bit.

This beautiful, curved bench seemed just right.  I sat, got out my sketch pad and drew.  Still agitated, I found the process of sinking down into the sketch a retreat. 

As I watched other visitors stop and snap cell phone shots of the garden, I thought about how we often use photos as a kind of enjoyment lay-away: tucking the beauty into our cameras to have the fun in reflection, often missing it in the moment.

The first bench reminded me of the need to take time to savor beauty.
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Bench #2

The sketch finished, I started roaming the grounds. The annoyance returned.  By the time I found this bench along a tree-lined path, I was on the phone with Alison, whose advice helped me put things in perspective.

Artists are often thought of as loners, who pursue their vision in solitude. 

But Augustus Saint-Gaudens knew the role others could play in his work.  He had assistants to help him create his large sculptures. 

Augustus also had his wife, Augusta.  (I wonder in what month they married?)  And other artists, who saw his idyllic home, came to New Hampshire to live nearby.  In fact, his house became the center of the Cornish Art Colony.  He frequently had creative people over for dinner and parties.

This bench reminded me that art needs a community.
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 Bench #3

Saint-Gaudens sought to have viewer interaction, so in this figure of Admiral Farragut, he had his pedestal designer put in two benches to invite onlookers to be a part of the work. I sat down on one, feeling the delicious coolness of the stone against my back.  Thankful for his invitation, I felt my participation continued to keep the work alive in a small way.

This last bench challenged me to keep an invitational element in my own work, making it more than just a statement of who I am, but an offer to my viewers (or readers) to come, to share something together with me.

Like the advice of three benches.  Wisdom without words.

Benched Week 54: the trap of success

I’ve never seen a downtown as empty on a Sunday night as St. Paul, Minnesota was last night.  It was like the city was asleep in the daylight. And judging by the number of people snoozing in parks, that’s not just a simile.

I started out with high hopes, impressed with an overpass view of the mighty Mississippi.  But the first park was a bust.  It was hotter than I had expected.  Most of the people I passed seemed a bit off.

Just when I was considering calling it a day, I ran into an old friend.

I was an early fan of Peanuts.  When the cartoon strip was converted into television specials, I recorded the music on a reel-to-reel player with a microphone held up to the TV set, so that I could teach myself the music on the piano.  Linus and Lucy, the most recognizable of the melodies, became my signature tune throughout junior high.

Pleased to find Marci on a bench, I sat a while with her and asked her what she was reading.  She was too engrossed to answer.

As the sun created intricate reflections on the buildings above me, I reflected on the price of success.

Charles Schulz was incredibly successful with his characters.  But acclaim can be a trap.  Because of the brilliance of his early years, Schulz stayed with his round-headed kids long past the point when he had fresh things to say.  In my mind, his later years were spent more on cashing in on them than on stretching himself.  Contrast that to Bill Watterson, who walked away from Calvin and Hobbes (and a barge-load of money) because he felt he had done enough with them.  I respect that.  Just as I respect an athlete who knows when to hang up his cleats.  Or flip-flops.



It’s an interesting question: would you rather do one thing well, or dabble in many?  I have chosen the latter – partly by necessity, partly by a deep-seated desire to explore.  It drove me recently to add watercolor crayons into my scribing, and last week, to buy a pricey draw-on monitor so that I can scribe during conference calls. Why stay pat when there’s something exciting just around the bend of the river?

So, when the sun goes down on my career, I think I’d rather be known by the breadth of my work. Hopefully it'll be more than an inch deep in meaning, but definitely a mile wide in scope.  There’s too much fun in the journey to ever fall asleep on the shore.

Benched Week 53: a familiar place

The bench was new. The surroundings were not.  For nineteen summers, we’ve brought one of our kids to this camp, hidden on a winding dirt road in the Poconos.  Each of them stayed for a typically memorable week. Some, when old enough, have worked for the whole summer.  We even got a wonderful daughter-in-law out of it.

Grace and I sat by the lake, listening to the birds, watching the sun light up the leaves above us. I asked her what she liked best about the place.

“Everything,” she answered.  “Except the bugs.”  Then, when an agile Whitetail Skimmer landed briefly on a nearby rock, she corrected herself, adding, “Only the gross bugs.”

I know what she means by everything.  The camp has been a place of spiritual recharging for my kids.  It’s a fun place, but there’s depth beneath the games and songs -- not unlike the tadpoles just under the surface of the pond that challenge even the youngest of visitors to come in and catch them.

“So, as you look forward to the week,” I asked her, “is the anticipation more about what you remember or about something new that might happen?”

She thought for a bit. (Then asked me if this was for the blog. When I said yes, she thought some more.) Finally she said, “For what I remember… but something new always happens.”

After a bit, she left me to my own musing.  Soon a young counselor sat down on the other end of the bench and began to read. I watched the sun illuminate the pages of his book.

Like that, Grace’s words threw some light on the experience we have with art.  Any great painting (or book, or music, etc.) has more depth than we can take in on one sitting.  When we return to it, we have the same anticipation.  We come for the familiar.  We walk away with something new.

I’ll admit I’m not big on re-reading.  Or multiple viewings of movies.  Or hanging up paintings.  But there are two such paintings in my house that have, simply by being on prominent walls, invited me to absorb them.


The Nooning by Winslow Homer was a suitable theme for when we moved our boys to the more relaxed pace of a small town.

And Carrot Cake,which I painted early in my career, still amuses me after all these years.

We should all be so fortunate to have a place that soothes us with its familiarity while stretching us with something new.  Better yet to have such places hanging on our walls and sitting on our shelves, ready, whenever we are, to engage us.

Benched Week 52: unexpected

Just after sunrise, I made my way back to the trail I had found the night before along the Merrimac River in Andover, MA, just a short walk from my hotel.  I had begun to scope it out at dusk, but was unwilling to chance meeting what kind of urban troll might be waiting in the dark under the highway bridge.  Paranoia? Maybe.  I’ll call it caution.  After all, I once drew scenes from Three Billy Goats Gruff.  I know how these things work.



In the morning light, everything seemed less ominous.  Light, reflected off the river, flickered on the trees, as if animating a silent conversation in the woods. 



A sculling duo sliced silently through the water.



I found my bench, though it was more like a table in size.  Perhaps it was built to fit that troll. 



Deciding to explore a bit more, I walked for a while, passing under the bridge (no troll) and beyond, lost in contemplation and concerns for the day of scribing ahead. On the way back, passing again under the roar of traffic on the highway above, I looked to my left and was astonished to find an unexpected sight.



Artwork!  How had I missed this coming through the first time?



After taking a few shots, I returned to my bench to mull on the nature of graffiti.

I felt a kind of kinship with the artists.  Not that my neighbors need to fear the sanctity of their siding, but I am impressed with the exploration of type and color and shape exhibited in this out-of-the-way gallery.  I play with the same toys in my corporate image-making.

But there is a major difference – besides the illegal part.  These artists are making a bold statement about themselves.  They’re making their mark.  What I do in my day job is capturing statements made by others.



Then, an unexpected thought came to me.  Through art, an artist says, “This is who I am.”  Through illustration: “This is what I can do.”  I see a fair amount of illustration passing for art on the web – demonstrations of drawing ability that, though often stunning in realism, most likely don’t say much about the artist.  Except that he or she can really draw.

A friend, Heather, who reads this blog, said that she enjoys the life lessons I include.  So here it is:  this is true for more than art.  I suppose the perfect zone in which to operate is that space where what we do embodies who we are.  Where each action, word or mark that we make speaks of those core truths that guide us. Where the way we live mirrors what we believe.

We can hardly hope to do that perfectly.  But it’s worth the pursuit.