An Example of How Social Media Fosters Connections

On Wednesday I published here my interview with Davilla Harding, which included a question about her influences, in particular the books that helped her. One of those books was Painting the Things You Love by Adele Earnshaw.

Somehow Adele learned of the mention here and left a comment here. What happened next is contained here in the email below which I received yesterday.

Ed - I did go on Adele's site and have passed along this email to her from me. I thought she might enjoy knowing how much her book has gone on to inspire others...artists and young students. It was such a long "story" behind (and beyond) the influence of her book just on me....there just wasn't enough room on the blog. Thank you again for taking the time to make connections between artists, through your blog, and "passing on" your enthusiasm and love for art and the artist!

Have a great week!
DH


From: davilla Harding
To: adele earnshaw
Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2010 10:49 AM
Subject: Thanks for comments to blog

Hi Adele - I wanted to thank you for your kind feedback to my blog interview with Ed Newman. As a career elementary school teacher, I always treasured the moments when I knew or found out how much something I said or taught had affected one of my students. And although I could not put all of the information in the blog, your book (and philosophy of Paint the Things You Love) basically changed the way I painted...as I mentioned in the blog. I would like to pass on a little more information to you as to how your book has further affected me and others - as I mentioned in the blog, I have tried to "pass it on"!

Personal Experience - The first thing I painted after reading your book was a portrait of a sepia photograph my father had taken of me when we lived in Athens, Greece. He had just passed away a few months earlier, and so the photo took on an even more signifigance. It has received a couple of recognitions/awards, and I do believe it is the because I began to paint the things I love!

"Passing It On" to Others - A lady came to our watercolor group about 1 1/2 years ago. She had a tremendous desire to paint, but often left, crying in frustration over what she "could not do." I had her read your introduction. She continued to come with her DESIRE, EFFORT, TENACITY, TIME and ATTITUDE. Because of her determination, today she paints happily away without the deep frustration of "I want to so badly, but just can't." In fact, our latest workshop was painting a very complex modern cityscape. Hers was very good...and we all applauded and marveled at her wonderful progress.

The World of Children - Although I have retired from the classroom, I still serve as an educational consultant for a local school district helping the 4th grade students with composition writing (which is tested by our state's standardized TAKS test). I used your book as one of the foundation points of effective writing. I showed them your book and told them about how profoundly it had changed my painting, and then showed them the painting Waiting. I suggested that whenever they write to the writing topic, they should be sure to write about something they love (or feel very strongly about) and make the reader of their composition "feel" what they feel/felt during that experience. I gently patted my heart, and had them do it also, and said, "You should feel your heart thumping with excitement/emotion over whatever it is you are trying to put on paper, just as I did when I painted this portrait of me. I included a photo above to show me at the class demonstration. I wore a red heart to symbolize, and remind students of, this writing strategy...sorry the quality of the photo is not that sharp. (I "tongue in cheek" told them on the day of the state TAKS test, I would be sitting at my lake home - 20 minutes away - and I wanted to hear all of their hearts beating with excitement to get every word on the paper). The scores have not come back from the TAKS test, yet, but I am positive they will do well!

I hope you don't mind my going into so much detail, but I think you might enjoy hearing how much, and in how many ways, your words have helped others! Thank you for sharing your inspiration with all of us and helping each of us to become better artists in our own way.

Davilla Harding


This remind me of a couple of my own experiences online involving books, Internet connections and affirmations. Thank you, Davilla, for sharing this....

If interested, here's where you can find your own copy of Adele's book Painting the Things You Love. Have a great day.

Top right: Waiting, by Davilla

The Slow City Movement

"Slow down, you're moving too fast..."
~Simon & Garfunkel, Feelin' Groovy

In February our friend Mario from Italy sent me a link to a blog entry about the Slow City movement. I finally slowed down enough to look into it. And it's pretty interesting.

Actually, the Slow City movement is an attempt to get whole cities to participate in the Slow movement. You may be familiar with some of the siblings in this family of attitudes: Slow Travel, Slow Food, Slow Books, Slow Living.

Personally there is a lot of attraction to these attitudes. I know that when Susie and I travel, we like Slow Travel. Art galleries, museums, nice restaurants all take time, and that's what a vacation is in our book. My brother and his wife take the reverse course, Power Vacation where they seem dedicated to taking in as many experiences as possible. "While we're here we might as well cram in the Bahrumba Cliff Hike and do the Bungees over on the next peak." More power to 'em.

I like reading, but slow reading is certainly the best way to savor a page of quality prose. It's like fine wine versus Ripple. People drinking Ripple aren't doing it for the flavor, it's about how fast you can get slammed. The same with reading. It should not be about how many books you can read in a year so you can win a contest. Reading for pleasure includes pauses to roll images and ideas around in the mind, to chew and digest... and like a cow chewing its cud, resume chewing.

According to the Slow City Manifesto, no city larger than 50,000 can be part of this movement. Minneapolis is out. Philadelphia is out. Even our little corner of the world, Duluth, is out. This doesn't mean we can't individually pursue Slow Living.

The trademark or emblem of the movement is an orange snail with a crown made of modern buildings. That could be interesting. (I once wrote an article that began with the opening line, "Which is slower, a snail, a glacier, or a piece of legislation through congress?")

Life at a snail's pace might be a good thing, though right now I'm kinda busy and don't have a lot of time to think about it.

For sure when we slow down we experience our surroundings more. The marshlands, the trees, the fields and outcroppings of rock in our rural areas make a far greater impact when you walk through them than when you fly past them on the highway. Last Sunday for Mother's Day we went to Carlton Bike Rental and took a lazy ride up the trail to Jay Cooke State Park. There are 63 miles of bike trail starting from this location, and I've been told they will be connecting yet more trail to it from the headwaters of the Mississippi, so it's easy to see why they're staking a claim that Minnesota Starts Here.

In the meantime, enjoy your day. Don't forget to take a moment now and then to stop and smell the roses.

Five Minutes with Watercolorist Davilla Harding

People are fascinating. And the myriad ways they express themselves is equally fascinating, especially in the arts. Every picture tells a story.

Something I have been doing a lot of the past year is seeing what other people are doing in the arts, both by visiting art galleries locally and online. As I skim through websites and online art galleries I am always surprised at how many ways in which creative people can express themselves.

So it is that last week I stumbled upon Davilla Harding, a watercolorist currently residing in East Texas. Her painting Sunset Among the Ruins led me to want to interview her for Ennyman's Territory.

Ennyman: You grew up in a military home and lived in a variety of countries and cultures. How did this experience influence you?

Davilla Harding: During his military career, my father was stationed throughout the world: Greece, France, Germany, and Japan. Whether standing at the base of the columns of the Parthenon, observing the masterpieces of art in the Louvre, or walking the beautiful landscapes/gardens of Japan, I was always in awe and wonder at the beauty that was created by the artists of the world. This wonder and appreciation has only grown through time, and now especially, since I have begun to paint. The other great influence of this time period was my mother (a fine arts major in college), who was a collector of fine art and antiques. She filled our home with beautiful artworks/antiques from both Europe and the Orient.

E: When did you first take an interest in making pictures? How did you end up favoring watercolors?

DH: From an early age, I “doodled”, drew, and of course, colored coloring books. One of my proudest moments came when I was asked to compose and paint my 3rd grade Christmas mural at the back of the classroom.

I never took formal art lessons as an adult, because I pursued my career as a teacher. When I retired in 2007, I looked around to see what I might do to continue to be creative and productive. I went to our local watercolor art group with the thought that maybe this might be something. On that day – the moment I saw the watercolor flow on the paper and the beauty of light and colors that was expressed with it and through it, I “fell in love”. My passion and love for watercolors has only increased as the months/years have passed.”

E: I take it you have travelled some based on your paintings like Sunset Among the Ruins. (right) What other places have you painted? Do you have any travel destinations pulling you toward the future?
DH: Most of the paintings I have done of places in foreign countries have been based on family photos or memories.

My immediate travel destination will be to go soon to Maui, Hawaii where my daughter lives. I want to capture the intense and brilliant light and colors that I have seen nowhere else in my travels. Then I want to return to Europe and capture my own images, as seen through my vision as an evolving artist.

E: You mention being self-taught. And also having an opportunity to see museums around the world. Who have your influences been to inspire what you do?
DH: My favorite artist from the old masters has to be the paintings of Johannes Vermeer. I was always entranced by the “light” of/in his paintings, and of course, the story that was told in his portraits of middle class life.

Other favorites include Degas, Monet, Rembrandt, Renoir, Georgia O’Keefe – to name only a few.

E: When I was young I never had the patience for watercolors. What advice would you give to people, young or old, who want to work in this medium?

DH: Two very important suggestions – one from a book and one from personal experience:

A. Early on, I bought the book Painting the Things You Love by Adele Earnshaw. Because I had come so late to the process of painting, she said something in her “Introduction” that inspired me tremendously. I have since passed it on to other beginning artists:

“Artists of lesser talent (than the Masters) become successful because they have three necessary ingredients: DESIRE, EFFORT, and TENACITY.” To this equation she adds DISCIPLINE, TIME and ATTITUDE. So I have taken that formula, included my PASSION for watercolors, and embarked on what I hope is an evolving career.

B. Surround yourself with positive, supportive people who encourage, promote, and take joy in what you are trying to create and/or become. So often they can see in you, what you might not yet be able to. That has been my experience with the support and encouragement I have received from my family and watercolor group.

E: What art magazines have you found most useful for you?

DH: Because I am just beginning my study of watercolor painting, my primary time and money has gone into buying and studying books by watercolor artists that have inspired me. Probably the 4 books and artists that have been the most inspirational to me in the last few months are the following:

Painting with Your Artist’s Brain by Carl Purcell
Painting Spectacular Light Effects by Paul Jackson
Seven Keys to Great Painting by Jane Hofsteter
Painting the Things You Love by Adele Earnshaw

When I do read from magazines, I have shared those collected by my watercolor group. I have listed just a few below:

The Artist’s Magazine
The American Artist: Watercolor
Watercolor Artist

E: When will the book you are illustrating be published?
DH: The projected date is late summer or early fall.


To see more of Davilla's watercolors, visit Artworks By Davilla.

Thank you for sharing so thoughtfully with us here.

Interview with John S. Hall, the Blind Poet of Ritchie County

Saturday morning I was talking with my mom about Great Uncle John S. Hall, the blind poet of Ritchie County. John was the youngest son of the venerable Halls of Highland, West Virginia, born in 1845. His name came up because the day before I had been in Nashville, flying home from a business trip, she asked about the flooding, and then asked if I had seen the hospital there, which I took as a strange question unrelated to anything. She then explained that great uncle John Hall, who had been overcome with fever during the battle of Murfreesboro in the Civil War, was taken to the Nashville hospital where he would spend five months, either in recovery or transition to the grave.

I thought it might be entertaining and informative to tell his story by means of an imaginary interview today. It's a remarkable story about a remarkable man.

Ennyman: Is it true you were found in a delirium on the side of the road after the Battle of Murfreesboro? Which side were you fighting for and how did you come to be there?

John S Hall: I'm the youngest of five brothers (we had a sister who went on to marry a McGregor) in the northwest region of the State of Virginia but which is now West Virginia. As you know, this great conflict split families right in two and ours was one so divided. Two of my brothers took sides with the North and two with the South. They were all involved in the political wranglings and my two brothers with Northern sympathies actually led the charge in our state legislature to break West Virginia off from Virginia. My oldest brother Leonard was a member of the Richmond Convention that voted for secession. Simon and William took up arms for the North. The youngest, except for me, was Allen and he fought for the South. After the war, when Allen and William compared notes, they found they'd fought against each other in seven different battles!

You can read about the role my brothers played in the secession of West Virginia in Dr. James C. McGregor's book The Disruption of Virginia. (McMillan 1922)

Enny: I'd always heard you ran away from home to join the army when you were fifteen.

JSH: No, I was fifteen when the Civil War broke out. Still a teen when I ran off though. Mom did not want me fighting -- in fact, vehemently opposed it -- so I snuck off at night to join the Teamsters, serving in the Union's Fourth Brigade. It takes a lot of work to supply an army, and I was part of the machinery of war in that way. We were attached to Sherman's army, cutting through Tennessee in the early part of his famous march to the sea. The fighting was bitter because we were on Southern soil at this point, in the heart of Dixie.

Enny: What can you tell us about your experience from there?

JSH: They say I was found in a delirium on the side of the road somewhere outside of Murfreesboro. They say I protested when I was to be taken to that hospital in Nashville. You know the reputations hospitals have. For most of us, it's the last stop, the gateway to the grave.

I was there from the end of October till the middle of May. That's a long time to be laid up. For three months of that period my hands were tied behind my back. I was full of bed sores and quite beside myself.

For some reason there were doctors who took a special interest in my case, because the other six fellows who came in at the time with this condition had all died in two weeks. So the doctors kept checking in on me.

One day, I heard a doctor describing my circumstances to a visiting physician and I felt a gentle hand touch my forehead. I was still in a semi-conscious frame of mind, so it surprised them when I spoke, "That was a soft hand." Someone replied, "Yes! That was the famous Dr. Mary Walker."

Enny: Ultimately, the fever left you blind, but you fully recovered otherwise.

JSH: Yes, the fever had centered in my brain and left me without sight when it finally lifted. Those were frightening days for a boy so long from home. During that time the doctors tried to find out who I was. They didn't know where I had come from, so they didn't know who to contact. And my parents had no idea where their boy was. They hadn't heard from him in many months and feared he'd already found a shallow grave.

Enny: Tell us about Lelia. Didn't you write a poem about your time in the hospital called Lelia and the Silver Charm?

JSH: One of the doctors there, Dr. Francis, had a wonderful daughter who began to visit me, became special to me. She would come to my bedside and read to me, which helped pass the hours. The poem I wrote was later published in The Wetzel Messenger in 1877. You might say it is my way of enshrining her memory.

Enny: How did you finally find your family.

JSH: Someone came across the address of my sister. Maybe there were some things of mine that had been stored, I don't know. They wrote and my family was overjoyed as you can guess. But it was not an easy road, because their son was now blind and in the prime of his youth.

Once home I went away again, to a College for the Blind in Columbus, Ohio, from which I graduated in 1868. It was an influential school. One of my classmates went on to become Chaplain of the House of Representatives in Washington. I studied to be a teacher and which is what I did for seven years after graduation, five of those years in Highland, named after the Scottish Highlands by the McGregors who'd settled in these parts. I also became the first schoolmaster in Cairo, there in West Virginia.

But I had higher ambitions and went to law school and admitted to the bar. This was still not satisfying and in 1878 I started a newspaper called the St. Mary's Observer with Minus P. Prettyman. Three years later I started a second newspaper called The Oracle. The newspapers fulfilled something for me. Being fond of expressing myself through the written word, I ultimately took an early retirement to enjoy my later years surrounded by nature and writing poetry. My book Musings of a Quiet Hour was published in 1907 when I was 62.

Enny: My grandmother said that the first ten years of her life you used to babysit her and recite poetry out on the hills.

JSH: People had to work and it was easy for them to let me watch over their little ones. I remember your grandmother, Elizabeth. She was a very bright child. She really liked to listen when I would recite verse.

Enny: Thank you for your time here today. Your life made an impact on a lot of people, and I number myself among them. Thank you. Any last thoughts?

JSH: Maybe I should close with this...

The softly fading twilight hours
Bring once familiar things to view,
And memory wakes the withered flowers
To beauty and to life anew;

And friends departed gather 'round
To worship here at memory's shrine,
Till all are here on hallowed ground;
Their presence makes life seem divine.

'Tis sweet to sit at eventide
And pensive watch the fading light
In golden silence softly glide,
From weary day to restful night.

And in the quiet evening hour
When silence soothes the world to sleep,
To yield to some mysterious power,
And gently in with childhood creep.


Primary Source: The History of Ritchie County by Minnie Kendall Lowther.

Eight Minutes with Artist Steve Derrickson

The second half of my junior year at Ohio University in 1973 I shared an apartment with two very generous guys, an art major and a poet/writer. They opened their place to me when I was down and out, and I’ve been forever grateful that someone noticed me when I was pretty much consumed with myself after a broken relationship. Ah, youth.

The artist was Steve Derrickson, and two decades later, thanks to the internet, I located him one evening in the mid-1990’s. We had each gone our separate ways, so the brief reconnection was out of the blue. Actually, I played a bad prank by pretending to be with the IRS and needing to speak with him about discrepancies in his paperwork. (Sorry, Steve) I’d heard from mutual friends that he’d gone to get his Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) and taught for several years, then went to the Big Apple.

It is now fifteen years later and, thanks to Facebook, we connected again. His skills were strong even then, and I remember well the large Gorkyesque canvas that hung in our living room at that time. We both had a mystical strain and he had nicknamed me Slow-Fast Eddie.

On Facebook, he describes himself like this: Post pop artist semiotician, Dad, Shambhala Buddhist, cinephile, plasterer and painter, reader and observer. Here’s a quick snapshot of where Steve’s journey has taken him to this point in his life...

Ennyman: Very briefly, summarize your art career after O.U. Masters at Tyler... then teaching....
Steve D: Taught at Univ. of Texas for 7 years, showing regionally. Then moved to NYC, where I was an art mover, showing in alternative spaces, group shows in NYC, shows in LA and San Fransisco galleries. Curated a couple shows; CINEMAOBJECT, in '86 in NYC, Insect Politics at Hallwalls, Buffalo in 1990. This is my shortest resume ever!

Enny: Who were the artists and painters whom you found inspiring during that period in your life?
SD: As a student; Gorky, Duchamp. Later; German painting; Richter, Polk, Neo Rausch.

E: When you paint, who is your target audience?
SD: I am my target audience.

E: What advice would you give to college art students today?
SD: Change majors! If not, don't mess around, promote thyself!

E: How did your connection (or re-connection) with your spiritual self influence your work?
SD: My path has changed the way I think of my own work, and speak about it. Dharma is everyday life.

E: Have you read Tom Wolfe's The Painted Word? Any comments on his analysis of where art went wrong?
SD: I haven't thought about that book since I read it 30 years ago. I rarely read art criticism any more. Art is constantly 'going wrong', it’s what makes it exciting.

E: For a while you did paintings with a UFO theme. What other themes have been dominant in your work over the past 30 years?
SD: I made a decision to work with themes that interested me as a teenager; UFO's, pin-up girls, and garage bands. Movie imagery as pulp-fiction preoccupied me in the 90's. Lurid mass psychology.

E: I checked out your “girls and guns” paintings. How does this subject matter play to womenfolk?
SD: Women seem to get the satire as well as the obvious lust which I embrace unapologetically.
I did a body of work in 90's called Eye Flower, drawn diptics of eyes and vulva's. Surrealist erotica one could say. Women related to those. They were delicately drawn.

E: Thanks for this space in time, Steve. Good luck in your ultimate quest.

To see a few of Steve's more current paintings, visit his Facebook gallery titled Guns and Girls Again.

The White Tiger

I just finished reading The White Tiger, by India novelist Aravind Adiga. Though a disturbing book on some levels, I found the narrator's story quite compelling. It is told first person in a series of letters from Indian entrepreneur Balram Halwai to the premier of China who is coming to India. His experience in moving from the lowest classes to the entrepreneurial class becomes a mechanism for showing the social and economic inequities in contemporary India. "Let's not form too glamorous a picture of what is happening there," Adiga seems to be saying.

The story details Balram's experience as a chauffeur for a very wealthy man, but in the telling we understand the disparity between his roots and the place of the rich, and the hopelessness that threatens to engulf him. He is a pawn with no value or power. The central thread then is how he came to make his choice, to murder his rich boss and assume a new role.

The first person narration is reminiscent of the existential voice used so effectively in books like Dostoevky's Notes from Underground, Sartre's Nausea and Andre Gide's The Immoralist. The character recounts for us the factors and forces that transform him from honest and insignificant to successful business owner.

A key metaphor in the novel is the rooster coop, an image the narrator returns to over and over again. Amazon.com reviewer Kerry Walters puts it this way: Balram recognizes that those who are eaten are trapped inside a small and closed cage--the rooster coop--that limits their opportunities. Even worse, they begin to internalize the limitations and indignities of the coop, so that after awhile they're unable to imagine they deserve any other world than the cramped one in which they exist. Balram's dream is to break free of his coop, to shed his feathers and become what for him is a symbol of individualism, power, and freedom: a white tiger. But as he discovers, white tigers have their own cages, too.

Not everyone will like the book, which won the Man Booker Prize. One critical review on Amazon.com cites that its appeal is due to the fact that its setting is foreign to us, and therefore exotic, adding that it is also overweighted with cliche dialogues and images. Nevertheless, for me, the book carried me through and served as a reminder that there is much suffering in our world, and let's not be too quick to whitewash others' sorrows.

For more reviews, or to purchase this book yourself, visit Amazon.com

The painting of a white tiger atop this page was produced yesterday afternoon during the KUMD Dylan Hour here in Duluth.

Is Television More Powerful Than Ever?

I remember well the Michael Crichton address to the National Press Club in which he predicted the death of television as a result of the Internet. This was the mid-nineties and indeed, the Internet was coming on strong.

I've quoted Crichton's prediction on numerous occasions over the years, only to discover through enough recent observations that I was wrong. It wasn't long before my Twitter involvement (aka ennyman3) revealed to me that the things most tweeted about are usually streaming from television sets around the country, almost always the main networks. Sport, politics, reality television and the seemingly eternal Justin Bieber... All of it originates on what used to be The Tube, but is now more often than not a flat panel.

According to a "A Special Report on Television" in this week's The Economist (May 1st-7th), television is far from dead. The average person still spends more than three hours a day in front of the tube.

The special report has articles on various aspects of television in 2010. One article is about the problems of bringing TV programs to the Internet. Another discusses piracy issues, the television equivalent of Napster. A third shows how 3-D will emerge as a powerful new app for television, via sports. Another article takes time to assess the future of interactive TV.

The article that especially caught my eye was the one dealing with how people really watch television. One researcher spent 100,000 hours videotaping viewers to analyze their behavior and learned that most do not fast forward through commercials, and even though many say they are watching more TV online, they really aren't doing it as much as they say. In fact, most are more couch potato than they care to admit.

One of the articles here credited George Gilder for prophesying the demise of television in ten years, purportedly in 1990. Yet I remember the Crichton statement on NPR during a lunch hour listen circa 1995. Guess they were both wrong, eh?