New Clothes

Late August in the hinterlands, and the urban influx mulls our wine. Night air raises a shiver, a parade of downpours has revived the grasses, and summer visitors are squeezing out the last ounce of vacation. In their wake we confront our provincialism.

We've been pigging on fresh corn for the last three weeks, and the pesto farmers are up to their necks in basil. Our second planting of peas is up six inches and groping for a purchase. Hay rolls elucidate the meadows, and the birds are flocking. Trees on the margin are starting to show their colors. We're trying to wave ours.

Steaming Hay

Vermont

Swamped in the seasonal inrush of the larger culture we can lose our sense of isolate identity, and city angst tugs our ankles. This week Jim and I drove over to southern Vermont and visited Steve and Ben in Sandgate. Three boomers and a boy up a backhill in postcard country. Vermont always makes Maine look a bit seedy, and Vermonters always seem way sophisticated. Everyone reads "The Times" and knows the score. I came away unsettled, uncertain about being a local artist on the fringe.

Steve built his house on the North side of Sinners back in the Seventies, when so many of us were in flight from a failed cultural revolution. Country carpentry seemed a sane alternative to head butting on the mean streets. But Steve went back into the stews, while Jim and I sank into localism. Pushed our boulders up different slopes. Twenty years later we see the world from disparate hilltops. We still share a Sixties bias, and are glad of the company, but our styles are divergent.

How different an artist's life is when it's not measured against a city scale. Karl objected to my calling him a "colorist". I was merely trying to describe his technique of building images out of vibrant multiple hues, he winced at being categorized as an adherent to some school of painting. A city artist must struggle against the constraints of critical analysis, being lumped as a this or a that. Rural artists are beyond the pale, and critical definitions are beside the point. Nobody is reviewing us. I couldn't find a common parlance with Karl.

Karl does shows in Tribeca, has book illustration contracts, is a known commodity in the art biz. This is how America thinks of artists, when it bothers to. We are supposed to master our craft, find a market niche, promote ourselves, turn a profit, get famous. Art as commodity in a commercial society. Artists as performers in the cultural circus. Those of us who aren't getting rich, or getting puffed, are obvious failures. "Who are YOU?" is the defining question. The work itself is almost beside the point.

Not that we escape the noise in Maine. Carlo has been muttering over the artist's role at recent figure study sessions. An old artist friend of his committed suicide this month, and Carlo insisted it was his last artistic act, a grand self-expression. Not knowing the particulars it's unfair to judge, but the instinct of some of us was that suicide is the ultimate unkindness, cruel to those you love. Not a noble artform. Which brings us to the nub: is the artist's work about individual expression, or is it a vehicle for something transcendent? Is the artist's life a bellowing in the wilderness, or part of a social colloquy?

Bibber's Wholesale

In an increasingly hierarchical society that tells us only a few artists are important, that it's all about their unique sensibilities, the notion of art as a communal act seems arcane. At least in the city. If you don't inflate your ego uptown, you get flattened. But fame is as fleeting as it's rare, and the brass ring is hardly worth the grasping, if the cost is alienation. The sense of failure that goes with the name game is oppressive. Small wonder an urban artist might feel suicidal.

Down home we're all unknowns, and can chase other birds. Not to say rural art isn't full of self-expression. What else is style, after all. But it doesn't have to be ABOUT self, and what a relief that is. There was a time when the city art scene seemed to be an exciting cauldron of hot ideas and new ways of seeing, but it got swallowed by the commercial imperative and the name game. In the Sixties we felt there was a common purpose in our extravagances, now it's every odd duck for himself. Except out here on the edge, where we tend to hang out together and honor our mutual absurdity.

Pipeline Cat

A show of Carlo's drawings is opening in Portland this Friday, and the tribe will turn out in full feather. Carlo, more than any of us, is tortured by the urban anguish, even at this remove. He craves critical recognition, even while he affronts the taste makers. After 30 years in the puckerbrush he still looks to New York as the holy city. He can't stop measuring himself against sky scrapers, and his oils reflect a sophisticated sensibility. But they're witty, too. Taking the Mickey out of Lucien Freud. Making us confront our inhibitions about flesh. Large and difficult paintings, so blatantly exposed, but so unerotic. His drawings are simple studies, and their colorist vibrance is a delight. In some ways they grab you quicker than his oils, because they don't have the time to take them self seriously. I'm posting a page of Carlo's paintings in honor of his drawings exhibit.

For me the unabashed nakedness of Carlo's vision makes him the boy in the tale. He really sees the emperor's new clothes. Look, look, look.. draw, draw, draw.. is his mantra. Look at how it really is, so intently that embarrassment is beside the point. When Carlo pushes the button on the timer in life drawing sessions he calls: "We're working." And the work is about seeing. And revealing. If it's all just a pose, expose it. If the emperor is naked, show it. Let the critics Fall where they may.

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