Coincidences and Perspective

This morning I was drawn over toward Mom and Pop's old house across the creek by the sight of white shapes billowing in the grass just beyond the bamboo patch I planted in the middle of that field two years ago. I could have just gone into the TV room for the binoculars, but it was a nice day, so I took a walk. Fortunately so, for I found that the white shapes were "ghosts" fluttering from a framework that the S's had erected as part of an obstacle course for kids coming to a picnic today. And I had a nice conversation with Mr. S about a variety of stuff.

Now here's where the coincidence comes in. How many times in your life do you think about gargoyles two times within a few hours as a result of two separate incidents?

While talking with Mr. S I noticed that one of the high dead branches of the weeping willow tree down by the pond presents a perfect image of a gargoyle at it's very top when looked at from up by his house - and I mentioned it to him. It looks so much like a crouching animal that we both looked at it for quite a while before becoming sure it was just an aspect of the profile of the branch from that perspective. So that's one gargoyle.

Then later, about mid afternoon, Marianne M called to talk to Linda about plans for a cookie making day before Christmas. But Linda was napping, so Marianne and I proceeded to talk about a variety of things, one of which was art and her surprise at finding me writing about it in a previous blog entry. And that led to talk of the artwork that Catherine and Liana are doing in this class they're taking. And, naturally, one of the things was to model a gargoyle. So that's two gargoyles in one day.

Below are links to the girls' artwork. I liked the positive negative cutouts they did and I found it interesting that their work is so much different one from the other.

Liana's cutouts are very symmetrical, very controlled. At first glance they're reminiscent of parquetry or formal design, like an English formal garden. But then the first one started to look like a tribal mask to me, quite a good tribal mask, symmetrical but not symmetrical at the same time.

Catherine's cutouts are aggressively asymmetrical and interesting in a whole different way, reminiscent of cubism at first glance. And then I noticed the jester face within the teddy bear face on the left side of the first one. The first one is very, very cleverly done; but I still like the second one best for the way the angular cutouts on the left complement the rounder cutouts on the right and top, and especially for the way the little windy road at the bottom leads into the square.

That windy road in Catherine's cutout reminded me that Van Gogh painted a picture of a winding road entering a field from the foreground much like that. I think Van Gogh's picture is in Chicago with one of his greatest paintings - the one of the little room he lived in, in Arles, I think. Stand back from that painting and the perspective is perfect, the corners vividly sharp and angular. Move closer and you have to be amazed because the corners are just the barest suggestions sometimes suggestions made of lack of paint. Like when you get involved with a pointilist painting. You're forced to ask yourself, how did Van Gogh do that? He had to be close to daub on those little brushstrokes; but he had to be seeing the painting from far to see the corners in his mind's eye.

The standing in my shoes pictures are also interesting for the differences between them. Liana goes for bold colors and complex geometric shapes on the soles of the shoes, while Catherine goes for softer colors and softer, more restful, motifs on the soles of the shoes. It took me a while to figure out the logo on the soles of Catherine's shoes.

Only Liana has a gargoyle, which is what started this whole blog entry. Her gargoyle reminded me of a cow that was in one of the Disney cartoons. Maybe Catherine had a gargoyle but it came alive and ran off like the gargoyles in the movie Ghostbusters.

I'll have to remember to point out the gargoyle at the top of the tree to Liana and Catherine when they next come over.

Perspective is everything in life. What is obvious from close up is sometimes a mystery from afar. And what is obvious from afar is sometimes a mystery from close up.

You can sometimes see what Van Gogh saw by squinting your eyes just so when looking at a vivid scene like fall tree colors in bright sunshine, or a dark scene like the sky in moonlight. If you could paint what you see when you squint your eyes like that maybe your paintings would be the prizes of museum collections, almost literally priceless. The last Van Gogh that came on the market was a relatively small and not very good one, if such a thing can be said. It brought a price of $87 million from a Japanese fellow a dozen or so years ago, I think, for the information of you Philistines out there. Not that I have much room to criticize, as though that has ever stopped me. Aside from a very few artists that I recognize on sight, I read the labels in the museums just like most people to know which ones to look at more closely and respectfully than the others.

You can see Catherine and Liana's artwork at the links below.

Catherine http://www.artsonia.com/museum/art.asp?id=3679928

Liana http://www.artsonia.com/museum/art.asp?id=3679958

Questions of taste

Linda is skeptical about this; but the truth is that I picked the site for our house so it could face due South toward the sugar maple tree about a hundred feet down toward the creek. I also picked the site to face a little to the right of due South of a beautiful scarlet oak which then promptly died. I failed to ensure that the ground level around the scarlet oak wasn't changed when they excavated for the basement of the house and regraded the lot. And that happened because we wanted the house to sit a couple of feet higher than the former grade level to improve the view of the pond.

All very complicated; but as a result we've had a great view of that sugar maple tree out the South facing windows as it has grown these past twenty-four years. I was about to say that there are few trees as magnificent as a sugar maple at this time of year; but that's not true. What's true is that there are no trees as magnificent as a sugar maple at this time of year. And there is only one tree, the sweetgum, that can and will make an effort at competing when its leaves start to turn in a couple of weeks; but by then the sugar maple's leaves will be a dim memory. It's impossible to keep in memory an accurate picture of the subtle reds and oranges and yellows and greens that make up the sugar maple right now, and it is impossible to capture its full glory in a photograph, so in truth even the effort of comparison between it and other trees is questionable. Vincent Van Gogh could have captured its full glory, and he would have if he could have; but he never saw a sugar maple tree.

You can get a dim idea of what I'm talking about by checking out the color wheel of leaf colors on this wikipedia page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acer_saccharum

Our sugar maple is actually a very young tree. It was perhaps twenty years old in 1984 when it was about forty feet tall and had aabout an eight inch diameter trunk. It's now about eighty feet tall and its trunk is about eighteen inches in diameter. As an aside, I was pleased to see that the tree at the Morton Arboretum whose picture is posted on wikipedia is a lightweight next to our tree. And our tree is a mere youth. I'm too lazy to look it up right now; but I think our tree can expect a life span measured in hundreds of years; and it can conceivably grow to a trunk girth of four or five feet at which point the spread of its branches (there's a better word I want here but again I'm lazy), the spread of its branches - aha - the diameter of its canopy, dripline - still not exactly right, dagnabit, but I'll settle on dripline for now. You'd think I would remember that word because the reason we have a crappy silver maple in the spot formerly occupied by that long dead scarlet oak is because I didn't realize that the ground level could not be changed all the way out to its dripline.

But enough with the dripline or canopy or spread, or whatever. When the sugar maple is mature in a couple of hundred years the diameter of its dripline will be as great or greater than its hundred and fifty foot height. A pity I won't be around to see it.

But I will be around to see the sweetgum when its leaves turn in a couple of weeks. The sweetgum will be quite a bit more garish than the sugar maple now is when it reaches the peak of its color; but I'll appreciate it for the same reason that I can appreciate Van Gogh even as I appreciate Monet, although, oddly enough, when it comes to art in a museam or on the printed page I'm more a fan of the flashy Van Gogh than of the subtle Monet. I think it's a question of scale. Had he ever seen a sugar maple in its glory Monet would have painted it realistically; but Van Gogh would have captured its eighty by forty feet of subtle beauty and condensed it into an eye popping splash that would have expanded in one's mind into a full sized tree.

And that's why I prefer Van Gogh. At two or four or six or eight foot wide scale I want to be knocked over; I want colors to pop out at me. At eighty by forty foot I prefer a bit more subtlety of shading.

Meanwhile I have to get out into the woods. And while I'm out there I have to contemplate the important question of taste that Linda just asked me. Would I prefer chocolate chip cookies tomorrow, or would I prefer coconut custard pie. I've already given my provisional answer that I would prefer chocolate chip cookies if they're going to have nuts, and I would prefer the coconut custard pie if I can't have nuts in the cookies to give them a bit of texture and bite. But I have to think some more about that. And I have to see how things are out in the woods across Doony Brook.