Endicott Redux

The Sunday Poem

Our Sunday Poem today is "The Last Wolf" by Mary TallMountain, from her collection Light on a Tent Wall, reprinted on the Poetry 180 website. TallMountain, a Native Alaskan writer who lived for many years in San Francisco's Tenderloin district, was the author of A Quick Rush of Wings, Matrilineal Cycle and other wonderful collections of poetry and prose. I particularly recommend Listen to the Night, a gorgeous volume containing forty poems on animal themes.

According to the Freedom Voices website, TallMountain "was born in 1918 in Nulato, a village along the Yukon River in Alaska, to a Koyukon/ Athabaskan mother and a Scots/Irish father. When her mother became terminally ill, Mary was adopted by a non-Native couple and taken away from her village. Traumatized first by losing her family and homeland, then by the harshness of mainstream American culture, she felt like an angry outsider for many years. Writing was a way of going home, of reclaiming her ancestry, her family and her homeland, and a way of claiming her own proud native voice. Her stories and poems portray life along the Yukon River and her removal from that land. Her work also captures tender images of street life in inner city San Francisco." Visit the website for information on the TallMountain Circle, and on the annual TallMountain Creative Writing and Community Service Award.

The art in this post is by Mark Wagner, who lives and works in the San Francisco Bay area. More of his paintings can be seen in the Endicott gallery ("Mythic Art" and "The Spirit of the Land"), and on his Hearts and Bones Studio website.   

In the flash of a moment

Have a look at the incredibly dynamic photographs of Martin Klimas -- who takes familiar images and transforms them into powerfully dynamic moments in photographs as they are smashed. You can read an interview with Klimas and see more of his work here.

The Art of Nick Kosciuk

Since 2001, Nick Kosciuk has been traveling to the former-Soviet Republic of Belarus, taking thousands of photographs of the homeless children raised in orphanages there and turning them into paintings in his studio in the American Southwest.

Why Belarus? As Bonnie Gangelhoff explains in an article published in Southwest Art magazine: "[Kosciuk's] parents asked him to accompany them on a trip to Belarus to explore the family’s roots. Kosciuk’s father was born there, and his mother, who was born in a German labor camp after World War II, is also Belarusian... Once Kosciuk and his parents arrived in Belarus, the stories he had heard as a child from his grandparents came alive for the first time. He met distant relatives and visited the site where his grandparents’ house stood before it was burned to the ground during World War II. He also retraced some of the steps the family took when they fled the country....

"It was on the last day of his trip that he had an epiphany, Kosciuk says. A family friend, who was a linguistics professor, took him to visit a nearby orphanage in Rudensk. She usually visited once a week to offer the children Bible study classes. What he witnessed at the orphanage moved him deeply. 'I saw so many kids with such a need for love and attention,' he recalls. 'They were hanging on me. It hit me that there wasn’t a long line of people waiting to take my place and give them attention. I was it.' Although he says that conditions have improved since then, Kosciuk’s first impression of the orphanage was that it was bleak, austere, and depressing. 'I was there an hour or so,' he says. 'In that time, I made a decision that I would come back for the rest of my life.'

"In all of his paintings, Kosciuk says that he is trying to capture the children’s beauty, resilience, and strength as well as their vulnerability, fears, and loneliness. 'They don’t have a past to draw comfort from,” he says. “And there is no such thing as hoping for an exciting future. Whatever it is, it will be hard. I’m just trying to show them how important they are. I tell them, ‘Someone is paying this much money for a painting of you.’”  Money from the sale of the paintings is used to support the children and the orphanages. To see more of Kosciuk's lovely, haunting work, visit his website. And go here to read Bonnie Gangelhoff's full article on Kosciuk, "Angels and Orphans."

Relating this topic back to myth, you might also be interested in an article on the "orphaned hero" archetype in myth, folklore, and modern fantasy fiction, published in the current issue of the Journal of Mythic Arts.

(With thanks to the Dante's Heart blog for bringing Kosciuk's art to our attention.)

Mermaids and Levis

Here's another example of fairy tales and advertising colliding in new and pretty hip ways: a short film for Levis jeans directed by French indie video filmmaker Michel Gondry. I think the mermaids are pretty interesting...sexy and a little scary.

Our Sonnets From the Portuguese

The new issue of Words Without Borders is focusing on the Lusophone world -- those speakers of Portuguese throughout the world, spanning three continents and a half dozen countries from Europe to Brazil to Mozambique. The site currently features a selection of Lusophone authors writing fiction and essays.

The short stories are compelling and edgy -- written in a magic realist style. Two stories in particular knocked me out: Portuguese author Teolinda Gersão's "The Woman Who Stole the Rain" (in which the narrator overhears an unsettling tale), Brazilian author, Augusta Faro's "The Ants" (a very creepy tale about a woman going mad), and, as I have been reading lots of Chandler and Hammett of late, I also enjoyed Rubem Fonesca's Latin noir-ish sendup in Mandrake.

There are also poems, book reviews, and some wonderful short nonfiction pieces. October is packed with events celebrating the Lusophone world and you can find a schedule here.

Magical Realism by Steven Kenny

Steven Kenny was born in 1962 in Peerskill, New York, and studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, with a European Honors Program year abroad in Rome. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums across the U.S. and Europe. Recent shows include Dreamland: American Explorations into Surrealism in Santa Barbara, California, and Venus and the Female Intuition in Denmark, the Netherlands, and France.

Kenny's passion for myth, folklore, and the numinous world of nature is eloquently expressed in his remarkable paintings, which are also works of activism aimed at awakening us to our responsibilities to the planet we co-inhabit. "We humans are inclined to forget or ignore the principles of existence," the artist says. "They include: every action directly impacts our environment, change is unavoidable, stasis is unnatural, time is beyond our influence, conception is the commencement of death as well as life, and many others. Our challenge is to humbly accept Nature's gifts and live by the lessons set before us without imposing our arrogant will upon each other and the planet.

"As humans more fully embrace technology we feel an increasing sense of anxiety, disorientation and fear. To compensate, our desire for predictability and order ignites a voracious hunger for control that induces us to force Nature to relinquish her secrets. Once a trusted provider, she is now viewed as 'shifty,' inadequate, and needing improvement. We manipulate our surroundings in an attempt to manage time, eliminate unforeseen change, and establish a permanent sense of stability. We go to great lengths to surround ourselves with psychological, physical, spiritual, social, and cultural environments that we hope will last. The result is an increasingly artificial existence.

"By combining detailed realism, surrealism, and symbolism I convey the universal language of Nature as I understand it. I visually combine the human figure, plants, animals, and other forms of matter in a natural tableaux vivants. These scenarios present our existence as either environmentally harmonious or complicated by human contrivances. My paintings serve as a reminder to myself, and perhaps to others, that all life on earth is a single organism. The world I depict is one where interdependencies prosper and hierarchies crumble."

I highly encourage you to visit Steven Kenny's website, a treasure trove of beautiful imagery, where you can purchase original paintings, prints, and copies of his magical art book, Soul Flight. You can also see his work on the Ten Dreams gallery, Klaudia Marr gallery, and beinArt SurrealArt Collective websites. (Many thanks to Endicott's Assistant Editor Jamie Bluth for introducing us to this painter's work.)

Shizen Nouhou

Following on from Midori's post yesterday, this month's issue of Orion Magazine contains a lovely article by Lisa M. Hamilton on shizen nouhou, natural agriculture, as practiced by the Shumei group in Japan. Hamilton profiles a farmer named Susumu Hashimoto, who explains how his daily work is a means of spiritual devotion. Hamilton asks him what he hopes to accomplish through shizen nouhou's labor-intensive, low-yield method of growing food:

“'World peace,' he replied, then smiled and waited for the next question, as if there were nothing more to say."

Read the full article, "Land, Farmer, Community: A Sacred Trust," on Orion Magazine's website. And while you're there, don't miss the gorgeous poem "Boundaries" by the great Mary Oliver in the same issue. The archive of past issues holds such gems as "Small Wonder" by Barbara Kingsolver (an essay reflecting on miracles, myth, and the nature of war), "The Naturalist" by Barry Lopez (discussing the importance of sitting quietly by a river), "Tumult of Vision" by David Abram (introducing the beautiful photographs of Mathew Chase-Daniel), and a lovely little essay on the humble tortilla by Rebecca Allen.

The painting above is "Seed Saver" by Steven Kenny. 

Sow the Seeds: Midwest Farmers' Flood Relief

Author Barth Anderson (who also works as a manager at Minneapolis' premier organic grocery co-op, The Wedge) alerted me to the growing movement by individuals, co-ops, and even chain organic grocery stores to offer relief and support for the Midwest organic farmers who saw their crops literally washed away in the flooding that occurred throughout much of the Midwest states this last August.

Sow the Seeds Fund has created a useful website for information for farmers seeking relief assistance and for individuals and corporations wishing to donate, as well as a list of co-ops. The site also offers a list of grocery stores in the Midwest (and across the US) that are participating in the assistance programs. Gretta Wing Miller has produced a short film on the flooding, which you can see here. And here's a short video of Barth Anderson on Showcase Minnesota discussing the flood and its impact.

Save the Tara Campaign

Author O. R. Melling sent me this information on the recent protests to stop the development of a motorway through the Tara Valley, one of the oldest sacred sites in Ireland (and the setting for her novels in the Fairie Chronicles series).

  "Here are some pics of the two truly mythic protests that took place this weekend in Ireland against the M3 motorway which is ploughing through the sacred valley of Tara. Raths and other ancient sites have already been destroyed with National Road Authority archaeologists insisting they have 'recorded everything.' Tara is now on the World Monument Fund's list of 100 most endangered sites.

"The EU is investigating the matter under destruction of world heritage but the Irish government is trying to rush through the motorway before it can be outlawed. If the motorway goes through, the noise of traffic density will overwhelm what is now a still, green, and sacred beautiful place; plus the inevitable development that will accompany the motorway will destroy the landscape entirely.

"First protest: harpers from all over gathered before the Dáil (government buildings) on Saturday, September 22, to play The Harp That Once Thro' Tara's Hall (by Thomas Moore) to voice their protest. The Green Man was there and also Irish actor and Hollywood star, Stuart Townsend, who has been championing the cause for three years.

"Second protest: a giant human harp and message on the Hill of Tara under the guidance of aerial artist and environmentalist visionary John Quigley. Crowd estimates from 2,000-3,000 people, more than expected, so John began to decorate - calling for people with red jackets to make those rubies!"  (Aerial photo credit: Paula Geraghty.)

There were additional support protests in Boston, Chicago, and New York. For more information about the campaign (and an opportunity to get involved) visit the Save Tara website.

(Photos: top to bottom:  Stuart Townsend at Harpers' protest, Human harp formed from protesters, Harpers' protest, people gathering to form the great harp, O.R. Melling doing her part as a bit of the great human harp.)

Benjamin Lacombe: Children's Book Illustrator

One of the joys of MySpace is discovering incredibly talented people -- such as Benjamin Lacombe, a terrific French children's book illustrator. Ridiculously young, (born in 1982 -- lord, I have sweaters older than that), he graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris and has published 12 books over the last four years.

Lacombe has three books due out next month which should be a treat for anyone -- whether you read French or not (though we might hope eventually for an English language version): an evocative rendition of Blue Beard ("Barbe Bleue," in an anthology of fairy tales published by EditionsTourbillon), rendered in dark, smoky illustrations with deep blues and reds; a sumptuous and visually romantic Japanese tale, The Butterfly Lovers (Les Amants Papillons published by Le Seuil); and a quirky (ala Tim Burton), scary tale, Ernest's Dangerous Night (La Funeste Nuit d'Ernest, written by Perez Sébastien and published by Edition Sarbacane).

To see more of his incredible work, visit Benjamin's  MySpace page and his website.