eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781546247937 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 07/18/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 118 |
| File size: | 31 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Journey into Vermont
Land Speaks
I often wonder when I look up to these mountains in Vermont where the sky actually begins. I think it surrounds me, but then I see its passionate breath touching the mountaintops each morning, and I wonder how the sky can remain at such a distance from me. I am sure that in the foggy mornings the mountains whisper stories to the fog. Those mountains do have stories. They hold stories and secrets from the many, many generations that have passed through their creases. There were births. There were deaths. And there were and still are families, created by blood and survived by friendships.
The height of the mountains moves slowly with a delicate flow to the valleys. Farms sit in pride throughout the valleys. Some old buildings have been carefully restored to their former years, while others sit in disrepair with sadness and age and tears running forth. Ghosts and misery hide in the corners of the restored and disheveled buildings alike. Joy needs more coaxing to come out. She has been locked away in the mortar that builds memories not believing that life can hold crimes and ugliness. Joy hidess in the shadows of life.
Wherever I have traveled in the world I've believed that the landscape could tell me more stories than I would want ever to hear. In 1987 I traveled alone in Jerusalem, the Old City, and then farther into the border city of Bethlehem. By the time I got to Bethlehem, I met a young man, a fast romance, who traveled with me. He said he was a Druid but left his family, never able to return again.
He took me to small towns where I might never have traveled, but because he seemed accepted in both Palestinian and Jewish territories, it seemed safe. I could hear bombings in the distance as we traveled. I remembered thinking how precious a place I was entering, yet one with such conflict and continual torment over its land.
When I left Israel, I was stopped for the usual questioning at the Tel Aviv airport. I was naïve and I answered all their questions about where I had traveled, times I was alone or not alone. The questioning became more intense and pretty soon my bags were being torn open and everything pulled out. The inner lining was ripped open. I was tagged with florescent orange stickers and escorted onto an upstairs station.
Although I remained calm, I was suspicious about why I was the focus of their attention. In a separate room, a respectable female Israeli officer strip-searched me. She seemed to think I was okay and sent me on. Although I was able to board my flight (very late), I had to keep the stickers all over my backpack and body and to be seated in First Class. Not bad, I thought, and yet I still wondered why?
Later in the flight, after chatting with others nearby, I discovered that Israeli officials take the initial questioning very seriously. They were alerted to a problem as soon as I told them I was a non-Jewish female and I traveled in border towns. I could have been handed something or worse, I could have had something planted in my bags by this stranger I traveled with briefly.
Israelis take their land and honor and safety very seriously. Israeli and Palistinian land has been in dispute, in war, for so long, and people die nearly every day over that war. Lives of individuals, thus families, and religious, historical identities are lost over that land. I doubt if any land on our planet holds any richer, deeper, more historical secrets than the Middle East.
Landing in Vermont
Vermont was declared a state in 1791. However, there were Native Americans and settlers here long before that time, and the moose, wild cats, deer and other creatures all survived much longer than that. Vermont has been home to many.
I discovered in Hands on The Land: A History of the Vermont Landscape by Jan Albers (2000) that the native people in Vermont were doing a lot more than just passing through. In three early periods: 9000-7000 BC, the Paleoindian, 7000-900 BC the Archaic and 900 BC –1600 AD the Woodland, they made their homes here.
There is some current thinking that the Abenaki, the well known Vermont indigenous people, descended from the development of these other earlier tribes in the area. The Abenaki had an interesting philosophy of adjusting and adapting to the Vermont landscape. They were settling into this region in the 1600s, and they adapted to nature rather than adapting nature to themselves.
The Abernakis' attitude towards the land was an extension of their spiritual beliefs. They attributed personal qualities to many objects within nature and thus treated nature with honesty and respect, as they would a person.
That's not to say that the Abemakis did not alter the landscape in order to survive the harsh winters. They knew how to travel from lowland in the coldest months to the higher elevations for food as February and longer days approached. While they did clear paths and create homes to stay warm, their spiritual connection to the land gave them a reputation for a devotion to a creator bigger than they were who was responsible for creating the natural beauty surrounding them.
How A Landscape is Created
The Abernakis had the right idea about nature. It is good to let nature drive the human and not the other way around. Because we have allowed men and women to exercise some control, we are now in an environmental disaster.
The natural landscape has suffered from human attempts at controlling the environment, change the face of the city, create urban sprawl, and take over farms for the sake of suburban networks. The beauty of our landscape no longer looks anything like it did fifty years ago.
For example, when I returned to my hometown area of Cincinnati in 1997 to care for my father, I was shocked at how ugly the outgrowth looked. I could not find my way around the outskirts of the city because the roads were totally developed from graveled, dirt backroads into highly developed subdivisions.
Cincinnati had exploded. Its population was large and out of control and, consequently, the growth of industry and environmental hazards was out of control, too. Today Cincinnati is one of the top polluted cities in America.
Jan Albers explains that landscapes do not just spring fully formed from the earth. The landscape is the accumulation of many decisions by humans about how things should look and function. We are responsible for what we are living with today.
Landscapes have everything to do with people. The land shows our values, our care, our compassion and definitely, most definitely, our priorities. If we care about our ground water, then we protect it. If we care about old buildings, then we try to maintain them. If we care about raising our children in a pollution free place, then we find a way to make it happen.
CHAPTER 2Why Place Matters
Images live on in my memory.
I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, a town known for baseball, its brewery and its race riots in the sixties.
I grew up in a rural area outside of the city. We lived on a dirt road surrounded by woods until pavement came and a subdivision developer bought the land. Then people, cars, and pollution moved in. Our plot of land seemed to shrink.
My father was a teacher at the local parochial school, an early morning newspaper carrier and a butcher at the local deli. He never finished college, but was still their best teacher. My dad's life was about connections with people at his school, in the town and its outskirts. His happiness came from understanding that he made a difference wherever he went.
My mother suffered enormous anxiety throughout her life. She held onto regrets, obsessed over her daily pains, and eventually became completely agoraphobic, choosing never to leave her house during her last decade (60-70 years old). No two people in my life could demonstrate the yin/yang of a relationship better than my parents. They held onto each other for 42 years of a marriage because they believed that was the right thing to do. My mother's family hailed from Alabama and was Southern Baptist, while my father's family was a very large strict Catholic clan in Cincinnati. My parents met on a blind date after my mother's former fiancé was killed in the war. My parents' relationship resembled their parents' relationships. My paternal grandfather was open, kind-hearted, and nurturing, while his wife was firm, dictatorial, and depressed. My maternal grandfather was stubborn, intelligent yet arrogant, and strict both in his business practices and with his wife and child. My maternal grandmother was meek, hard-working, and always anxious and worried. I find I sit somewhere in the murky mess of all of these ancestors, hoping I carry on the best traits but knowing I could struggle with the worst.
As a young child and young adult, I grew up parenting my mom but being nurtured by my dad. He knew I would be an artist and teacher and he never understood why I had to travel, explore and try new things only to select what he knew all along was best for me. My dad longed to have his morning coffee at the bakery with friends and linger over the baseball results from the day before. I could not wait to leave Ohio and discover my next journey.
Traveling has always allowed me to look beyond who I am. My travels allow me to pretend, to meet people and let them see whoever they see and to know I may not stay in that world for long. Our time here is all about our manifestation of intent.
In The Invisible Landscape Kent C. Ryden calls the many places that affect us as "invisible landscapes." Ryden suggests that the places are significant to us not just because of the way they look, but because the impression they make upon us. The beauty that each of us experiences in these places has nothing to do with objectified aesthetics.
My childhood impression of Ohio was affected by the race riots of the 60s. As my father looked at the neighborhood where he grew up, he saw destruction. Never one to become angry, he simply said, "This was going to happen at some point because whites do not know how to listen."
The longer my dad lived in Cincinnati, the more he saw the landscape within his community change. He saw anger and frustration in both whites and blacks. He saw his city fall apart and try to re-build, only to find the task impossible. The dialogue had been compromised since days of slavery when black slaves crossed the Ohio River hoping for their freedom. The sad reality was that Cincinnatians often housed those slaves on false premises of freedom while turning them over to their white slave masters the next morning. Suddenly the race riots of the 60s were proof to me that the landscape of that city would never change. All I felt was a need to get out.
These stories of slavery and deception affected my sense of self and my torment, embarrassment and lack of pride in being a "Cincinnatian." By 18, I was ready to leave.
Place inside Me
The Breadth of Place
After 18 my travels included college at Edgecliff, Mount St. Joseph in Ohio; a teaching experience at Alpha Primary in Kingston, Jamaica; studies in figure drawing from two masters at The Art Students League in New York City; and then my first teaching experience out of college at my former elementary school in Cincinnati. I became their first art teacher. Two years after that teaching position, I pursued my Masters in Art Education from the Rhode Island School of Design. I studied for a summer semester in Holland, living in a small village called Amersfoort and working out of a Dutch artist's studio. At RISD I met a diversity of artists and there in the rises of the hills of Providence I learned the meaning of experience and commitment to my life as an artist. I was taught that before I could teach art, I must first be a dedicated artist.
My artistic engagement is with me every day. I hold onto images that surround me whether in Ohio or Michigan or Rhode Island or Vermont. I find that traveling enriches my sense of self and allows me to develop a rare and magical impression of a place. In Jamaica I saw poverty, discrimination, and class differences. I also saw the festivals, heard the reggae music, tasted the food and climbed the mountains. I was able to live on the grounds of the complex of schools where I taught. I taught at Alpha Primary but I also observed at the private school, the equivalent of the high school where students move through "forms," and the Boys' Reformatory. I lived in a house with a Jamaican high school girl. (I admit to having enjoyed some Jamaican rum with her and another US volunteer on a weekend or two!) We all had limited resources so would hitchhike into New Kingston, the resort area, and sneak into an elegant hotel where we would change into bathing suits in the bathroom and go poolside for a dip. That was our Saturday escape from the true hot inner city poverty we experienced during the rest of the week.
My travels nurture my creativity. I remember these places and the cultural interactions that form their context for my learning. It is not about finding elegance; it is about finding essence and truth wherever I go. In Israel, before I traveled on my own, I lived with my friend on a kibbutz near Elot. There I participated in the same lifestyle, chores and common occurrences that she experienced for years.
Over many years, I have learned that everything I do nurtures my creative expression. It is not always about time in my studio. Now, as a mother, I find that time is minimal and filled with interruptions. When I did have time, it would be filled with sitting and dreaming or planning and watching. Creativity is nurtured in many different ways. The creative process is not linear, like a complex equation, but rather it's about taking a walk, washing the dishes, folding laundry, sitting in silence for 30 seconds. The mindful attention I bring to each moment of my day as an artist is that fulfillment I experience thinking about and engaging with my art.
Artistic engagement is not about the number of paintings. It is about the intent of painting and the moments that are filled as I experience my life moving forward to that painting process.
In The Lure of the Local: A Sense of Place in a Multicentered Society Lucy Lippard defines place in many different ways, from a personal vision of place and feeling centered and belonging, to the broader community concerns that give it meaning and purpose for more than one person. Lippard covers the regional aspects of place as well as community and cultural considerations. She spends considerable time discussing artists' interpretations (of a certain place) such as their emotional reaction to events or the history associated with a place. Near the end of the book, Lippard referred to all places as having stories. The visual artists, she believes are the storytellers who can take the local lore and connect it to what others can see and understood and feel in their lives.
That is how I see my role within landscapes. I am telling my story of my manifestation of self to place and in doing so, I am also interpreting the way I see others in this landscape. I enjoyed Lippard's intelligent use of art pieces and photographic images to illustrate her ideas. Her travels were rooted in the culture and communities where she visited and her representations were from the artists, the locals, who created their work within a place-based context.
CHAPTER 4How Place Fits
Soon after moving to Vermont I noticed that there were no morning traffic reports on the radio. I listen to Vermont Public Radio and instead of traffic, there is weather. The weather is given by the "Eye on the Sky" forecaster. The elaborate detail and prose style of this person make the listener get lost in the sense that weather is an unfriendly guest who stops by for a short visit but stays an infinity.
Vermonters are the folk who look to the sky each morning to determine the direction of their day. It is not about deadlines or office politics or getting into work before the boss knows you are late. It is about what that sky tells you for the course of your day.
It could be a blustery cold snow blowing in from Canada that keeps you close to the barn, fueling up the furnace or splitting wood for the stove. It could be an airy May morn that tells you to work in the garden before the afternoon spring showers roll in.
Helen Husher, a Vermont writer, wrote in A View from Vermont, "Bad winters---and all winters are bad here----have this compensating goodness, in that we know we are in the grip of something and its squeeze will not be changed by commentary. Understanding this speechless interval is probably a prerequisite for living here." (44-45)
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Manifestation of Self Within Place"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Kumari Patricia Soellner.
Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Chapter One – Journey into Vermont, 10,
Chapter Two – Why Place Matters, 14,
Chapter Three – The Breadth of Place, 17,
Chapter Four – How Place Fits, 19,
Chapter Five — My Artistic Place-Based Practice, 29,
Chapter Six — Art in the Hills, 38,
Chapter Seven — How to Love Being a Flatlander, 40,
Chapter Eight — The Farm, 45,
Chapter Nine — Developing an Intentional Practice, 48,
Chapter Ten — Building Family, 50,
Chapter Eleven — Returning to Place, 76,
Chapter Twelve — Settling In, 78,
Chapter Thirteen — The Spring Melt, 85,
Chapter Fourteen — Planters and Wallers, 88,
Chapter Fifteen — Re-Building the Past, 92,
Chapter Sixteen — That Other Vermont, 98,
Chapter Seventeen — Rising Above the Mountains, 102,
Conclusion, 108,
Table of Artwork, 109,
Place-Based Artistic Practice Bibliography, 111,