Local Art Seen: As Above, So Below -- Karen Owsley Nease @ the Kruk

"I turn to see my footprints in the sand

as wave after wave rolls in."

--Tracks in the Sand  

"A Fist Full of Dollars" (2017) -- Oil/alkyd on wood panel

"As Above, So Below" (2017) -- Oil/alkyd on wood panel

"L'Origine du Monde" -- Oil/alkyd on wood panel

"Purple Rain" (2017) -- Oil/alkyd on wood panel

"A Fist Full of Dollars -- small" (2016)

"Charlie Don't Surf" (2017) -- Oil/alkyd on wood panel

In this set of four smaller pieces we see...

Top Left: "Charge of the Light Brigade"

Bottom Left: "A Wave for Warhol"

Top Right: "We Came from the Water"

 Bottom Right: "Realm of the Bene Gesserit"

The scale of the work is impressive. For example, the triptych "A Fist Full of Dollars" is 36"x 108" (which is nine feet wide.) There are 16 pieces in all, with three being nine feet wide or more. Like the horizon's that stretch before one's eyes at sea level, all present themselves horizontally.

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As you saunter through the gallery the images of rolling waves and roiling waters may stir memories of one's own experiences on the great lakes and ocean shores of one's life. For myself this includes remembrances from the Jersey Shore as a teen, and Florida vacations as a boy, and my year in Puerto Rico circa 1978-79. Not one painting here has a reference point on land, so the isolation of being out on the ocean -- deep sea fishing in my case -- comes swirling to mind, though it's quite apparent that these are waves crashing into a shoreline, the perspective being from the great water's edge, feet most likely secure on rocks or sand. One's awareness -- the focal point -- is the water's power. There are no placid lakes or ponds here. Hence my connection to the Atlantic Ocean memories, or Lake Superior when it's in a turbulent state.

To learn more about the exhibit, visit http://kcai.edu/event/karen-owsley-nease/

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"As Above, So Below" will be on display at the Kruk Gallery through October 26 in the Holden Fine Arts Building at University of Wisconsin - Superior. FWIW there are a couple short-term free parking spots just outside the entrance to the gallery on Catlin Avenue. If you have never been to an exhibit in the Kruk, I strongly encourage you to visit the show and learn how easy it is to drop by during a lunch hour if you work. 

Meantime, art goes on all around you. Engage it.

Pickett’s Charge

I’m reading The Killer Angels again, Michael Shaara's deeply researched account of the Battle of Gettysburg, written with a storyteller's hand. It’s a book that probably could not have been written fifty years ago because it dares to be critical of General Lee, though this is not the book's focus. The battle made many images memorable, from Little Round Top and Devil’s Den to Cemetery Ridge. And it made many generals' names memorable as well, and none more so, in this battle, than General Pickett.

It could be argued that the mad futility of Pickett’s Charge broke the South. The unfolding events that orchestrated the charge should have never occurred but Fate had the upper hand and Reason found refuge in a foxhole. But was Pickett’s Charge the Worst Decision in Military History?

No. The whole of history is littered with dead bodies and tragedy.

Here is a familiar passage from Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

Similar sentiments can be found in Eric Bogle’s And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda drawn from recollections of the Battle of Gallipoli.

How well I remember that terrible day
How the blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter
Johnny Turk he was ready, he primed himself well
He chased us with bullets, he rained us with shells
And in five minutes flat he'd blown us to hell
Nearly blew us right back to Australia

If you have ever been to the Gettysburg battlefield and seen the stretch of ground across which Pickett and his men had to traverse, you can’t help but ask, “What were they thinking?” Maybe it had something to do with the madness of crowds. “All or nothing” has permanent consequences when you put lives on the line. “Ours is not to reason why; ours is but to do or die,” seems a common theme for the common soldier. And when a soldier falters in fully embracing this attitude, his own personal consequences are dire.

One of my own personal film favorites, this one set in the trenches of World War I, is Paths of Glory, an early Kubrick masterpiece that tells it like it was, is and probably ever shall be. War is hell.