How to choose art for the bare walls of a new house

It began with a June 19 Facebook post by artist Linda Anne Lopez of Winchester, Virginia. Linda and I met several times over the years. She's married to diehard reader and biker Ben Lopez, a longtime friend of my late brother Dan and his wife Nancy. They met in Santa Barbara while going to UCSB. Turns out they all moved to Florida for work and kids and riding motorcycles year-round. 

Ben is the most voracious reader I know and we trade book titles on FB. His most recent: a biography of Rudyard Kipling. My most recent is a novel The Sleeping Car Porter by Canadian author Suzette Mayr. I am now hip-deep in Carl Hiaasen's newest, Fever Beach. Ben sticks mainly to non-fiction and I'm a creature of fiction as that is what I write. And, sometimes, like these crazy times right now, who can tell the difference?

Linda got serious about her art after retirement. Photography was her thing. Along the way she discovered encaustic mixed media and that's what you're seeing here. 

Linda is  a bird-and-flower person which carries a lot of weight with me, a hummingbird admirer and gardener. She describes her specialty as Encaustic Mixed Media. She combines her love of photography with the ancient arts of encaustic. See further explanation below. Find out more at Lindalopezartist.com

And I spent most of my professional career in the art world, mostly in the realm of state arts agencies (SAAs), local arts funding, a stint at the National Endowment for the Arts, and dabs in arts and literary criticism. All of these worlds are being decimated by Trump and his goons but I will leave my political critiques to other posts on Hummingbirdminds and other rabble-rousing sites.

Linda got my attention with this FB post on June 19:

Hummingbird and flowers, encaustic mixed media, 8-by-8 inches, Linda Lopez

It got my attention because it is beautiful and because it features a hummingbird and flowers. I must have it, I told my PC, and contacted Linda. It was for sale and she also had a companion piece, shown in this June 25 FB post by Linda: 

Encaustic mixed media, Linda Lopez, work at left is 9-by-17 inches.

The new home this refers to is mine in Ormond Beach, Florida. They will be the first works of art to go up in our new home in a woodsy place called Groveside at Ormond Station. I plan to turn these bare walls into a gallery of sorts, one that will feature groups of pieces celebrating my wife Chris and me. These two pieces will hang above our dining room table which, strangely enough, matches the color schemes of the art. It will feature work by Florida and Wyoming artists with a Virginia and Colorado artist in the ranks. 

You might ask: Hey Mike, what, exactly, is encaustic? I will let Linda answer that:

Explanation and History of Encaustic 

Encaustic is a wax-based paint (composed of beeswax, damar resin, and pigment), which is kept molten on a heated palette. It is applied to an absorbent surface and then reheated to fuse the paint.  The word ‘encaustic’ comes from the Greek word enkaiein, meaning to burn in, referring to the process of fusing the paint.  

 

Encaustic painting was practiced by Greek artists as far back as the 5th century B.C. The Fayum portraits are the best-known encaustic works. These funeral portraits were painted in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. by Greek painters in Egypt. 

 

Modern encaustic painting was made possible by the invention of portable electric heating implements and the availability of commercial encaustic paint and popularized by its usage among many prominent artists. Encaustic paintings do not need varnishing or protection with glass. Beeswax is impervious to moisture, which is one of the major causes of deterioration in a paint film. Wax resists moisture far more than resin varnish or oil. Buffing encaustic will give luster and saturation to color in just the same way resin varnish does. 

 

Encaustic can be used as a traditional painting medium, but it can also be used to create sculptures, with photography (transfers and prints), drawing, and printmaking (monotypes). Painting with encaustic is a multi-step process. First, the paint must be melted. Then the molten paint is applied to a porous surface. The wax is then fused into the working surface, allowing it to form a bond. As a final option, the cooled paint can be buffed to bring up the luster of the wax and resin. Every layer of encaustic wax must be fused. 

Thumbs up to new public art on National Mall

 

New sculpture on National Mall in D.C. This is the kind of public art
we want to see. 

We take a Word Back: What to make of make?

In my 5/21 post, I brought up a term: word back. Used in a sentence: "I want my word back." Words in my English language have been stolen by corrupt people with no clue about the word's origins and what it really means. This is a travesty in my book, and I have a really big book on my side: The Oxford English Dictionary or, as we English majors call it, the O.E.D. Many of our public libraries used to have the book splayed open on a stand. Oddball students such as myself could peruse at their leisure, or make a beeline to it during a heated argument over the origin of a word or phrase. Yes, heated arguments about words. How I miss those. And the main reason I went dateless most of my college career.

Today's word is "make." And yes, it's the first word in the acronym MAGA. Those are the four words I will tackle during the next couple weeks. They are real words, not just initials on a red ballcap. 

What are we to make of make? Let the O.E.D. be our guide.

I hate to begin with a downer but, to save time, I must. Make can be a noun. In fact, it is a variant for maggot. Here's an example from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” circa 1604: “Your worme is your onely Emperour for dyet, we fat all creatures els to fat vs, and wee fat our selues for maggots.”

In more modern terms, we have this line by Mae West in 1930's "Constant Sinner:" "The double-crossin' heel! The garbage-can maggot!"

You don't see "make" in there. But, it is a variant which means it's rarely used except by historical fiction writers and time travelers. But the reference comes alive in 2025 because critics poke fun at MAGA followers by calling them MAGATS or MAGHATS or just MAGGOTS. We don't use the term as it's below our station to do so even though it's hilarious. 

Make is usually used as a verb that means to produce. Let's let Merriam-Webster have a crack at this: Make (transitive verb): to bring into being by forming, shaping, or altering material; to lay out and construct, to compose or write.

Back to the O.E.D.: The earliest known use of the word is in the Old English Period pre-1150. It has Germanic roots. It's use in Old English includes references in literature, music, and religion. 

Does the O.E.D. have anything to say about sexual references in popular culture? I didn’t look. But I have some examples. Let's make out (kiss, etc.). “Making Whoopee” (song about kissing etc.), "I want to Make It With You," a popular 1970s song by Bread which is really about sex as in "Love the One You're With" or so says Stephen Stills. Let's make a baby is a line used by married couples in rom-coms. "Wanna make sex?" is not a common term although it has been used in dingy bars at closing time.

"To make" is a very positive act. A maker is one who makes. A Makerspace is a place dedicated to making things usually artwork. My artist daughter visits a local Makerspace. Many public libraries have makerspaces in their children's/teens sections. Many of these libraries are under attack by Trump & Company and local right-wing kooks. Many makerspaces are funded by government grants which are being eliminated by the GOP-controlled Congress.

Makers, themselves, are under attack for being too woke and not appreciating all the MAGA Goodness spread like fairy dust by Donnie and Elon. Arts workers jobs are being eliminated along with budgets for state and local arts agencies as well as the National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. To tell an artist he or she can't make any more is absurd. That's like telling us not to breathe. But it will hurt all of us, this pilfering of money for the arts and humanities. 

Merriam-Webster lists these antonyms (opposites): Dismantle, destroy, eradicate, abolish, take apart, etc., etc.

To Make. Think about it.

Ormond museum features art from the war in France and the war at home

(Continued from Jan. 13)

I spend a lot of time at Malcolm Fraser’s “The Soul Escaping Death” painting flanked by a framed spread of many medals earned in World War 1. He served in the French Blue Devils unit and was wounded five times. He also was an officer with the Red Cross on the frontlines.

Chris wanders off. She knows that I may be awhile. 

That’s what you do at a museum, right? Wander. Or roll, depending on your mobility.

If you look up Fraser at New York City’s Salmagundi Club web site, you find that Fraser was a member. I had to search for him and the screen listed 56 items in the file. But the link does not go to the artwork but you can see some in person at the Ormond Memorial Art Museum & Gardens, 78 E. Granada, Blvd. The Salmagundi club is dedicated to representational art so it’s natural that it drew Fraser who painted portraits of the living and the dead, angels, soldiers, and John the Baptist among them.

“The Soul Escaping Death” shows a dead soldier on the ground in front of blasted battlements. He is wrapped in a U.S. flag that he apparently was carrying on the staff he grips in his dead hands. An angel has one hand on the body and another on a robe stripped from what’s supposed to be the soldier’s soul rising into the gilded heavens. The spirit looks free and happy, the vestments looking as if they are morphing into angel’s wings. The soul’s naked body looks female with long curly hair and the possibility of breasts and any genitals hidden under a triangle of pubic hair. It could be that this is Fraser’s vision of the angelic form, one that is human but intersexual, one that represents a brand-new being that we become after death. The exposed flesh of the dead soldier and the angel is rough and brown as if they were connected to the ground like old oak trees. The soul’s flesh is the pink of life, a representation of new life in the soul.

I looked at this painting a long time. I couldn’t decide if it was a work of hope in the face of death or a memoir of an artist who has witnessed slaughter on a grand scale. He was awarded both the Croix de Guerre and the Verdun Medal. “Verdun” was symbolic of the war for the French, a battle cry and also a memory of defeat. Verdun was the longest battle of the war, lasting 11 months. Casualties were enormous for the French and Germans, with 700,000 dead, missing, and wounded. The site’s towering Douaumont Ossuary contains the bones of more than 100,000 soldiers never identified, French and German dead intermingled. You can view them through little windows.

Fraser was an accomplished artist. Not sure he took many risks. The 20^th century was about to explode and the explosion was captured by poets and writers. The so-called “Lost Generation” gave us exciting and troubling masterpieces.

Charles Humes Jr. is a living artist from Miami who has much in common with this creative breed. Humes lives in the present and creates in the present. As an African-American, he has an endless array of subjects, many taken from daily newspapers. Lest we miss his messages, he uses newspaper clippings in his mixed media work.  The museum’s handout for the new year shows Humes’ “Gentrified” on the cover.

“Gentrified” is a loaded word in the black community. It often means that a black neighborhood is being turned over to developers and the mostly-white gentry who will inhabit the condos/townhouses that will replace independent businesses. Artists figure in this, too. They often are the first to occupy rundown urban neighborhoods because they can afford them. Then the city (I’m looking at you, Denver) becomes known as an arts hub and young people swarm in and then smart developers who saw this coming and bought rundown buildings kick out the artists and renovate them into condos and before long you have ranks of techies wandering the streets looking for art for their walls by artists who once lived in their building but now can only afford the prairie exurbs or some quaint rural village in the foothills that soon will swarm with newcomers seeking real estate in artsy quaint rural villages.

It's not the fault of artists. Hey, I just wanted a place to paint! It’s life in America. Not sure what it’s going to look like in Trumplandia.

Oh yes I do. I truly do.

Humes’ work will be on exhibit through Feb. 9. Next up are Colombian sculptor Felipe Lopez and collage artist Staci Swider. Accord to the handout: “Her [Swinder’s] work is a meditation on aging, memory, and the unseen forces that guide us.” Sounds intriguing and timely. Opening reception at the museum gallery is Feb. 20, 6-8 p.m.

Malcolm Fraser flies with the angels at Ormond Memorial Art Museum & Gardens

What makes a 49-year-old artist abandon his paints and go to war?

That’s the question I pondered when visiting the Ormond Memorial Art Museum & Gardens.

Malcolm Fraser was a Canada-born professional painter and illustrator who had graduated from the Sorbonne and attended Heidelberg University. In 1917, he left the U.S., steamed to Europe, and joined, after some intense training, the French “Blue Devils” unit at the Front. He was wounded five times and received France’s Croix de Guerre for his heroics. Later, he joined the A.E.F., was promoted to captain, and served with the American Red Cross on the front lines.

Fraser ended up spending most of his time in Ormond Beach. Toward the end of his life, he looked for a place to feature his artwork and one that was dedicated to veterans. A $10,000 endowment by Fraser in 1946 got the ball rolling and led to this impressive place.

Its priorities are clear when you leave handicapped parking and roll through the jungle. As Credence sang:

Better run through the jungle, 

Better run through the jungle, 

Better run through the jungle, 

Whoa, don’t look back and see.

I roll on my electric scooter and Chris walks. A beautiful space, and peaceful. I can barely hear the traffic zooming by on one of Ormond's busiest intersections. We enter the sheltered labyrinth and follow the lines on its painted multicolored surface decorated with butterflies and hummingbirds. It was designed by by Joan Baliker and the late Carol Bertrand and refreshed by Mack Sutton (artists must be named). This one is within a big gazebo and is a great play place for kids. I think about the outdoor stone labyrinth at my hometown Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, now covered with snow. 

Along the walkway is a monument by Mark Chew to veterans of the Korean War. Its streamlined silver surface reaches for the trees and beyond. It's the shape of a flame but cold as the Chosin Reservoir. Around the next turn is a bronze for Vietnam veterans by Gregory Johnson. On what looks like an old kitchen chair sits a helmet and canteen. Dog tags and a uniform shirt hang from the chair back. Its legs straddle beat-up combat boots.

I linger. This was my generation’s war, not mine physically, but it's lodged in the memories of any guy of draft age from that time (December 1968 passed Draft physical Jacksonville FL, high school deferment; December 1969 Selective Service Draft Lottery #128; Navy ROTC midshipman 1969-71; two months served on USS John F. Kennedy as midshipman, summer 1970; released from the Draft on Jan. 1, 1972). I once read this about those times: "Vietnam sucked the soul out of an entire generation."

Memories remain. 

Johnson's statue is homey, I think, the things a grunt might leave behind when he changes into civvies. Or it could be a family's reminders of a GI whose psyche never made it back home. Think of war stories: Krebs in Hemingway’s “Soldier’s Home” or Ron Kovic in “Born on the Fourth of July” or Billy Lynn in Ben Fountain’s “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” (whatever happened to Ang Lee’s 2016 movie based on the book?).

We emerge from the jungle and its memories. The sun shines on a colorful "Can Do" sculpture by the late Seward Johnson, part of the public art display on Grenada by the Ormond Beach Arts District. Also on the ground is the "Embracing Peace" sculpture celebrating the famous Times Square kiss on VJ Day. Inside the museum, a bronze plaque lists more than 200 residents who served in WW2 (updated in 1999 to list African-American veterans) and one dedicated to WW1 veterans. A WW1 Doughboy helmet rests in a glass case by Malcolm Fraser’s photo and bio that greet visitors. This is a decorated soldier, and we are here to see his artwork.

(To be continued)

It's time again for the Wyoming Governor's Arts Awards

This time every year the Wyoming Arts Council hires me to write the story on the annual Governor's Arts Awards recipients. Some of them I know from my 25 years working at the Wyoming Arts Council. Others are new to me.

I have worked or met all the 2023 awardees:

Mary Jane Edwards, recently retired director of the Jentel Foundation

The Munsick Boys, a father and his three sons from Sheridan County finding inventive ways to thrive in the music world

Geoffrey O'Gara, filmmaker and author from Lander

Milward Simpson, a live theatre guy in Cheyenne who was my former boss at State Parks and Cultural Resources

Mike and Jane Sullivan, Mike as Wyoming governor 1987-1993, and Jane as First Lady 

A great list. I learned a lot interviewing them by phone. We didn't do the Zoom thing as I am much more phone-friendly than Zoom-friendly. My background is in journalism and feature writing. I have interviewed hundreds of people remotely and in person. I prefer face-to-face but it's not always possible. For this assignment, I needed a firm desk to take notes as my right hand is still not behaving properly due to ulnar nerve surgery. Thus, my handwriting is worse than it ever was -- and that's saying a lot. People have looked at my notebook and asked: "Is this your kind of shorthand?" I usually answer in the affirmative, labeling my method Shay Script which sounds better that terrible penmanship. 

There's another aspect to the story. The nuns taught me cursive. When I began roaming around to find stories, I recorded interviews in cursive. I couldn't read it when I got back to my desk. I switched to printing when I began reporting for my college newspaper. Instead of long swoops and swirls, I now could just abbreviate words with a few letters and be able to translate it at the other end.  I sometimes get confused but that is what phone and e-mail and Internet are for.

I learned a few things. Mike Sullivan is a James Joyce fan and tickled Bloomsday fans in Dublin reciting snippets from "Ulysses" while wearing cowboy duds. There is a thing called cowboy rap which I discovered interviewing musician Tris Munsick. He sent me to YouTube to see his brother Ian's performance at Cheyenne Frontier Days. Ian brought his buddy Ryan Charles on stage and he rapped cowboy and the fans down in the pit loved it. Mary Jane Edwards has retired twice, once as a UW faculty member, and once as executive director of the Jentel Foundation and its artist residency program. She now is officially retired, or so she says.

Those are just a few tidbits from the features you can read in the February edition of Artscapes Magazine. I am busily translating and transcribing my notes. Wish me luck.

You will hear from the recipients at the annual awards gala on Feb. 23 at Little America in Cheyenne. Order your tickets here.

What's really in that Paris apartment, and why is it so important?

“The Paris Apartment” by Kelly Bowen is the second book recommended on the Historical Fiction Book Lovers Facebook site to take me back to France in World War II. “The Nightingale” by Kristin Hannah was the first. They both impressed me with the sacrifices made by women behind the lines. They are well-trained operatives such as Sophie in “Paris,” or small-town young women such as Vianne and her sister Isabelle in “Nightingale,” women who lose husbands to the war or best friends to Nazi death-camp roundups. They all did the right thing when they resisted the Nazi onslaught. Some paid with their lives. Others emerged from the experience forever altered.

I’m a bit of a newcomer to the category of historical fiction and I’m particularly impressed by women’s stories. My childhood reading about the war were books by men about men. I read first-hand accounts such as “Guadalcanal Diary” by Richard Tregaskis and “Brave Men,” Ernie Pyle’s accounts of men in combat in Europe. I read war novels and watched war TV (“Combat”). I watched war-era black-and-white war movies, many of them featuring John Wayne. Most were hokey, not that I cared about that when I was 12. A great one is “They Were Expendable” about PT Boats fighting the good fight against the Japanese invasion of the Philippines. My father told war stories which were mostly unwarlike. He carried a rifle for four years but more importantly, he was in charge of the radio, his unit’s link with the rest of the army.  

Meanwhile, brave women fought the good fight. It was “The Good War,” as Studs Terkel labeled it, because the enemies were so evil and we were so good. The Nazis were cruel fascists and the Japanese cruel militarists (also, they were a different shade of people). Even Donald Duck hated these guys.

But it’s not the global issues that motivated these fictional women. Sophie was not waving the flag for democracy. She was getting even for Ptior, her new husband killed at her side when the Nazis terror-bombed a Polish village in 1939. Estelle Allard’s best friend, a Jew, was rounded up by French collaborators and shipped to Auschwitz. They join the fight for personal reasons but find themselves enlisting in a righteous cause. It’s always personal. This time, the women tell the story. One compelling aspect of this book is the two time periods that move the story forward. One if the war itself, with Sophie and Estelle, the other is told from the POV of Estelle’s granddaughter who inherits the abandoned apartment. She thinks she is getting a luxury apartment in the City of Light. What she’s really getting is a history lesson. Lots of art history, too, as one of the main story lines of the book has to do with the massive art thievery by the Nazis.

The books mentioned above aren’t the only ones. The group site takes the big view of historical fiction. For more targeted lists, go to this group site: “BOOKS - 𝘽𝘼𝙎𝙀𝘿 𝙊𝙉 𝙏𝙍𝙐𝙀 𝙎𝙏𝙊𝙍𝙄𝙀𝙎: About Women, By Women Authors.” You’ll sometimes find yourself in the midst of discussions about what is true historical fiction and what is not. It is great to argue about books instead of politics, although that sometimes enters the fray. Have at it. You’ll discover some great books in the process. 

It's official -- Happy Moon Landing Day, Wyoming

California-based filmmaker Steven Barber wants to put up a memorial to the Apollo 11 astronauts. He wants to place it in Wyoming because it's the only state in the U.S. to celebrate Moon Landing Day. State Senator Affie Ellis of Cheyenne brought this bill to the Legislature over the winter and now it's official. Nobody gets the day off and nobody is touting a Moon Landing Day Mattress Sale. But at least we remember a historic first. And in Wyoming. Barber wants to build a replica of the memorial at the Kennedy Space Center which features the three Apollo astronauts. It was created by Loveland, Colorado, artist George Lundeen. You can read more about it on Cowboy State Daily. 

Barber estimates he will need $750,000 for the monument:

“I’m going to do a replica there. Period,” he told the Daily. “This is real simple. I find a billionaire, he writes a check and I build it.”

Donuts that are pretty as a picture

Donuts!

Haven’t given them much thought the past couple decades. They once were a regular morning feature, coffee and donuts. You know it was a good day -- or a long meeting was ahead -- when greeted with a box of donuts when you walked into work. Sugar and flour never tasted so good. Therein lies the problem. Carbs and sugar are not on my diabetic wife Chris's menu. Carbs, butter, and cooking oil led to my heart attack in 2013.

But I ate a donut this morning. They were cooked by The Donut Shop in Cheyenne. Most people know it by its pink exterior paint festooned with multicolored donut varieties. Daughter Annie, the artist, was so taken with the place’s color scheme that she created a painting in the place’s image. When it was finished, she framed it and we trundled it over to the Southside shop. There’s a café on one side and a Dollar General across the street. Donuts are in the display cases when it opens at 5 a.m. This means that the owners are up earlier to cook. Chris worked at a donut shop for a brief time. It was one of her three jobs. She was in the shop at 5 a.m. and the cook had already been there for hours. She worked the morning rush and then went home.

The Donut Shop won a 2022 “Best of Cheyenne” award and the framed plaque hangs in the dining room that has a half-dozen tables.  Bonnie the owner says she will hang Annie’s painting for all to see. We ordered a dozen donuts. Bonnie wanted to pay for them but we insisted on paying our own way. Many struggling artists have traded their work for food. Those times could be ahead for Annie. This was not one of those times.

The golden glazed donut I ate was delicious. Nostalgia in a box. Annie and I each took one and brought the rest downtown to the PrideFest committee readying the plaza for the afternoon event. Son Kevin is on the committee and built the stage. He’s also on the security team that’s a must for any Pride Month event this year what with all the right-wing loonies on the loose. Donuts might be a great peace offering in tumultuous times. This might be one of those times.

Donuts!

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, captures the city between the wars

I’ve always been fascinated with Paris in the 1920s and 30s. The inter-war period. The tensions of those years add pizzaz to any book. So many writers lived and worked there. A sojourn to Paris was almost mandatory. Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce. Artists, too, notably Picasso. Discovered some others as I read “Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932,” a 2014 novel by Francine Prose. The author tells her story of the 1930s and wartime occupation through the pages of imagined letters, memoirs, and journals by the book’s principals. The two main characters were inspired by real people. Gabor Tsenyi is a Hungary-born photographer who hones the craft of low-light nighttime photography as he prowls Paris streets, brothels, and bars. Lou Villars is a French woman athlete who ends up torturing prisoners for the Gestapo. Gabor is based on the famous photographer Bressai. He is best known for his pics of the demimonde who hung out at Le Monocle, the “Cabaret”–like club that attracted the city’s artists and LGBTQ crowd that dared to be cross-dressing club regulars in the thirties but risked danger when the war came. Villars is based on Violette Morris, a lesbian athlete who came under Hitler’s spell at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

The era is an attractive one for writers. Many of those who fled to Paris were survivors of the Great War and facing Great War Part 2 in 1939-45. Some 70 million residents of Planet Earth died in the Great War. It was, as historian Barbara Tuchman and others have written, the war that changed everything. Four-plus years of horror were embedded into the conscience of a generation that was tagged with the term “lost generation.” Survivors may have been lost but not as lost as the millions of ghosts who roam Ypres and Verdun and forever inhabit Europe’s psyche. An entire generation of young people was almost wiped off the planet. Small villages in England, France, and Germany lost every one of its young men. The world never got over it, nor should it.

This showed up in the work of the era’s creatives. Bressai’s famous photo, “Lesbian Couple at Le Monocle 1932,” shows a hefty woman in a man’s suit sitting next to a thin woman in a sparkly dress. The look on their faces can be interpreted many ways. To me, they look to the future with a mixture of dread and hope. It attracted the book’s author, was even the catalyst for years of research and writing. Did they stay together? Were they rounded up like other “undesirables” by the Nazis? Prose wondered too, as a similar photo by her fictional photographer is crucial to the arc of the novel. As I read the novel, I decided to look up this photographer and found his work all over the web. He captured a Paris that was both romantic and squalid.

It took awhile for me to get into the novel’s rhythm. It seemed a bit contrived at first. And then I got into the flow of the intermittent narratives. I was both a reader and a writer studying the technique as I went along. Most of the samples picked up where the other left off. But not always. The reader has to do some work to tie together the narrative threads. After a hundred pages, that became part of the book’s charm. Who is speaking, and when, and can this narrator be trusted? Don’t we always wonder if the teller of a tale is trustworthy or not?

Saturday Morning Round-up: Snow arrives -- finally -- and "Stay Close" keeps you guessing

Saturday Morning Round-up:

I’ve been interviewing the recipients of the 2021 Governor’s Arts Awards. These are the awards given annually by the Wyoming Arts Council for "substantial contributions made in Wyoming that exemplify a long-term commitment to the arts," Recipients include intriguing artists and very interesting people running arts organizations. Sometimes the person running the arts org is an artist, That artist continues to make art while promoting the arts in their community. It’s a time-consuming task, one that pays very little. But real people keep doing it. Read the articles in the next issue of WAC Artscapes. 

Just finished watching the eight-episode Netflix series “Stay Close” from the novel by Harlan Coben. Kept my attention through all the twists and turns. Surprise ending. The murderer is a character I didn’t suspect. The series is set in an English town surrounded by lots of water which figures into the plot in ways major and minor. Coben’s novel, as are most of his works (including scripts for the "Fargo" series) is set in the U.S. It’s a funny thing to watch a murder thriller transplanted to England. It’s almost as if we don’t expect people to die gruesome deaths in the land of Downton Abbey, stiff upper lips, and way too much tea-drinking. It’s also the home of Jack the Ripper, Sweeney Todd and inventive ways to torture and kill those who have ruffled the king’s feathers. Its staid demeanor helps make throat-slitting and gang-style executions stand out. Some inventive killing goes on in “Stay Close.” Keeps you guessing. Watch it.

Jan. 6 marked the anniversary of the 2021 Capitol Insurrection. While the Democrats in Congress, the president, and TV hosts made a big deal out of it, Republicans were nowhere to be seen except on Fox and some loony right-wing outlets. For those of us in the reality-based world, the attack on the Capitol was an attack on democracy. Repubs don’t see it that way. A few do. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney does. Her pops too. They were the only GOPers that attended the Congressional prayer service on Thursday. I know, Dick Cheney to war criminal standing up for what’s right? It was rich in irony seeing his masked face. But Rep. Cheney is one of two Republicans serving on the Jan. 6 Commission. She’s also blasted Wyoming GOP leadership as deluded radicals leading the party down a dangerous path. I’m no fan of the Cheneys. But when people do the right thing, you have to thank them.

We’re finally getting some snow. November was almost snowless but we started catching up with the season on Christmas Eve and the ground is covered as I write this. Ski areas that delayed opening are now chest-deep in the stuff. I am closer to most Colorado ski areas than I am to Wyoming's Jackson Hole Mountain Resort. But JHMR reports some incredible snow amounts on its blog this morning:

As of January 8, since New Year's Day, we have received 63"! We received 42" in the last 48 hours. As of this morning, we received 24" in 24 hours. Total snowfall is now 240" on the year.

Damn. Most Colorado ski areas have received half of that. For the record, Cheyenne at 6,200 feet elevation receives about 60 inches of snow in an average year. Last year was one of extremes when we received half our total in one March blizzard. If we received 240 inches of snow, we would be digging tunnels to our cars and those tunnels would be pointless because the city would be waiting for the sun to come out for the its primary snow removal tactic. And waiting.

In Memoriam: Stevon Lucero

Sad news arrived from Denver today. Stevon Lucero, the Chicano artists who I profiled in a Oct. 29  WyoFile story and linked here, passed away Nov. 28. He was 71. 

Lucero was a mentor to generations of Latino artists in Denver and around the West. He grew up in Laramie, attended UW, and then moved his family to Denver to pursue and art career. He helped found the Chicano Humanities and Arts Council in Denver. CHAC was instrumental in transforming Denver's Santa Fe Drive from a downtown shortcut into a certified Colorado Creative District lined with galleries, museums, and studios.

CBS Channel 4 noted Lucero's death with a feature today. In it, Arlette Lucero says this about the husband:

"He would take young artists under his wings and tell them the beautiful things about themselves, to bring them into the fold."

Poet and performer Adrian Molina (a.k.a. Molina Speaks), another Wyoming artist now living in Denver, teamed up with Lucero to build one of the immersive exhibits at the new Meow Wolf arts outpost in downtown Denver. Called the "Indigenous Futures Dreamscapes Lounge," it brought to life dreams and visions Lucero experienced over the years. Lucero painted the dreamscapes, and Molina recorded the soundscapes and videos. It fit right in with Meow Wolf Denver's theme of Convergence Station, "the convergence of four different dimensions." 

Family members have started a GoFundMe page to help defray funeral expenses.

Molina, quoted in the Channel 4 piece, said this: 

“Stevon became one of my best friends. A humble genius, a visionary. He’s an elder who’s deeply respected, and he taught me so much about life and about art over the last few years. His mission was to put God back into art, to bring the spirit and that was his meta-realism.

“It was a joy to paint with the master, and be in his presence every day."

R.I.P. Stevon.

The story of the dead sculptor's homecoming in Sand City, Kansas

Great article in the Nov. 12 edition of Flatwater Free Press: How a 101-year-old linked to Willa Cather altered a small town's future. Talks about Antonette "Toni" Willa Skupa Turner, a resident of Bladen, Nebraska, just down the road from Red Cloud. Toni Turner died at 101 in August. She was the granddaughter of Anna Pavelka, the real-life inspiration for Willa Cather's "My Antonia." Turner spent her life talking up Pavelka and Cather, a dynamo who helped turn Red Cloud into one of the most vibrant locations dedicated to any American author. More than 10,000 Cather fans journey to Red Cloud annually. Turner was the local literary celebrity everyone from Cather scholars to rabid readers wanted to meet. Cather based so many of her books and stories on Red Cloud and its people. Cavelka, a Czech immigrant, and Cather, intelligent girl of the town doctor, were from different worlds but forged a friendship that gave birth to a famous novel. 

My interest in Cather goes back to high school when I read "The Sculptor's Funeral" for American literature class. It was on of the classics in the typical 1960s lit anthology with all of the usual suspects: Hawthorne, Twain, Dickinson, Hemingway, Faulkner. Nary a writer of color in the batch. But Cather's story spoke to me. I couldn't pin a name to it. A famous sculptor's body is transported back to his Kansas small town on Sand City. Turns out the sculptor was a weird kid who got the hell out as soon as he could. He died young from TB and his final arrival causes much talk among the populace, most of it negative. Jim Laird, Harvey Merrick's childhood friend who is drunk, hears their snarky comments and confronts them:

Harvey Merrick wouldn't have given one sunset over your marshes for all you've got put together, and you know it.

Laird leaves in a huff. The final paragraph wraps things up:

The thing in him that Harvey Merrick had loved must have gone underground with Harvey Merrick's coffin; for it never spoke again, and Jim got the cold he died of driving across the Colorado mountains to defend one of Phelps's sons, who had got into trouble out there by cutting government timber.

It's a sad story. Lots of sadness in Cather's work and moments of triumph. She draws distinctive characters and it's hard not to be moved. When I read the story at 16, I knew something significant had happened but didn't exactly know what. Artists are different -- everybody knows that! -- and Merrick's differences made him an oddball in Sand City. Jim was an educated guy, a good guy who died helping out one of the town's worthless sons.

Why are all of these stories so damn sad? Cather's sculptor, Hemingway's soldier home from the war or the old man and his fish,  Algren's young punk who just wants a bottle of milk for mother, Dorothy Parker's big blonde. I thought I knew what sadness was but did not. I do now. I write sad stories because life is sad. The story is in the telling of the sadness lightened up with wit.

Cather changed her identity when she went off to the University of Nebraska. She dressed in men's clothes and went by Willie. She excelled in writing and journalism and worked her way out of Nebraska. But she escaped the sculptor's fate. She is celebrated in the town that inspired so much of her work. Not everyone is a fan. Her struggles with sexual identity make some Nebraskans nervous, even some of those in Red Cloud who reap economic benefits from the writer's legacy. 

I've read the novels but I keep returning to her stories especially the one about the dead sculptor coming home to a hometown that never knew him.  

Two Chicano artists from Wyoming tell their stories at Meow Wolf Denver

There's a story here.

That's what I said to myself when I found out that two Chicano artists with Wyoming roots were charged with installing their artwork in the trippy Meow Wolf Denver.

WyoFile agreed and published it today. Go read it here.

Adrian H. Molina (a.k.a. Molina Speaks) is "an artist, performer, master of ceremonies, and human bridge." He grew up in Rawlins, earned his undergrad and law degrees at UW, and then departed to Denver to pursue not law but art.

Visual artist Stevon Lucero grew up in Laramie, attended UW and, in 1976 departed for Denver with his young family in tow.

The two artists are members of the burgeoning Denver Latino arts community. They still maintain ties with Wyoming but their careers now radiate from the big city to the south.

Two more members of what Grady Kirkpatrick on Wyoming Public Radio refers to as "the Greater Wyoming Diaspora." Young people grow up here, attend UW, and then depart for greener pastures. Cities are magnets for creative people where they find encouragement and audiences. Disappointment, too, as artists from rural communities find they are competing with scores of equally talented people. That may beat them down or it may challenge them to excel. One never knows.

I've worked in the Wyoming arts scene for 30 years. Creativity prospers in the expected places and ones that surprise you. Sometimes artists become part of the Wyoming diaspora but you can see the place's influence in their work. That's true of Lucero's paintings at Meow Wolf inspired by lucid dreaming about an oddball Wyoming landmark. 

Meow Wolf Denver opened Sept. 17. Some interesting articles about it have appeared. Here's one. Molina is quoted therein. 

Jackson Hole Art Blog keeps me posted about arts events in Teton County and beyond

I spent two hours this morning reading Tammy Christel’s Jackson Hole Art Blog and 12 days of posts on Tammy’s Facebook page about the fall arts festival. Wonderful blog post about David Brookover’s photo techniques and the methods he uses to visualize the Tetons and valley wildlife. Great detail about the various papers he uses. I learned so much about silver prints and platinums and photogravures.  

Tammy FB-tracked the busy 12 days in Jackson with the fall arts festival. An arts extravaganza for what may be the most beautiful month in The Hole. Funny to note the clothing choices of artists painting en plein air. At the Quick Draw, artist Jason Borbet, clad in sweat shirt and bright-red mittens, paints the Tetons/Snake River vista made famous by Ansel Adams. Emily Boespflug decked out for a run down the slopes with gloves, three layers of jackets, a red scarf and wool cap. She’s putting the finishing touches on a painting while onlookers in stocking caps observe her progress. Fall in Jackson – winter one day, summer the next.

Tammy kept track of the many events and also logged in some of the accompanying fun things – Sunday Brunch Gallery Walk with gigantic Bloody Marys topped off with onion rings and the many studio open houses, including Laurie Thal’s cool glass-blowing workplace in Wilson. Tammy also logs in some of the prices paid for artwork. For the casual arts buyer, the prices are astounding. Someone paid $1.2 million for Howard Terpning’s “Vanishing Pony Tracks” oil (writes Tammy: “Wowza!”) and $65,000 for Gary Lynn Roberts Quick Draw painting of a winter day at the Wort Hotel in days gone by.

Impressive numbers. But not unusual for a noted arts town such as Jackson. It was ranked the number one small community on the list of The Most Vibrant Arts Communities in America 2020. That’s from the National Center for Arts Research at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

The top five were all in the Mountain West. Along with Jackson (which includes Wilson and Teton Village, Wyo., and Victor and Driggs, Idaho just over Teton Pass) were Steamboat Springs, Colo.; Heber, Utah; Hailey, Idaho; and Glenwood Springs, Colo. All of these places are within a day’s drive from my house. At 677 miles, Hailey would be a bit of a stretch, although Chris and I have logged one-day drives of 995 miles from our son’s place in Tucson. Long-distance driving skills are a necessity in our part of the world. It’s also good to note that three of the arts towns on the list of medium-sized communities are Boulder, Colo. (100 miles), Santa Fe, N.M.. (492 miles) and Bozeman, Mont. (595 miles). Note that Steamboat, Glenwood and Boulder are closer to me than Jackson, a mere 432 miles away, about the same distance as Heber City and Santa Fe.

As you can see, I live in the orbit of some of our country’s artsiest towns. Cheyenne is not in the SMU top ten. That’s OK – our arts scene is growing and we are very close to Denver and other pretty darn good arts town along the Front Range. Fort Collins has a multitude of outdoor music events promoted by the zillion craft brewers in town. I also like to browse the CSU Arts Center in the Old Fort Collins H.S. (Go Lambkins!). During the warmer months, you can find me outside perusing CSU Ag’s beautiful test garden and its large Xeriscape garden. Loveland is sculpture town. Visit and of the city parks to find an array of sculpture, from the representational to the avant-garde. I like the Chapungu African Sculpture Park east of the sprawling Centerra Center at I-25 and Hwy. 34. It features 82 hard-carved stone sculptures in a park with 600 trees of 20 species along with natïve shrubs and grasses. Wild Wonderful Weekend takes place there this weekend with a Saturday evening concert by American Authors who are actually American rockers.

As is true for many Cheyennites, we spend a lot of time at Colorado venues. We also support local arts. You can do both.

The top-five small arts communities mentioned above are all destination resorts for summer and winter sports. The rich have gravitated to these places so they can brag about swapping tall tales with real local cowboys at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar. They also like the views or viewsheds as realtors call them. It’s easy to be snarky about the scene and the outrageous prices paid for some art. Local writers have had some fun poking fun at the migratory riche, nouveau or otherwise (I’m looking at you Tim Sandlin). 

But I always loved traveling to Jackson for arts events and get there as often as I can. At all other times, I depend on Tammy’s blog and Facebook posts to transport me to its arts happenings.  

That summer day in Wyoming, that was some wonderful day

One of my favorite loop tours for visitors is Cheyenne to Saratoga via the Snow Range. And then back again. For me, this 300-mile round-trip is no big deal. During summer, the obstacles on this route are construction, poky RVers, and hailstorms. During winter, you have to add in "slick in spots" hazards along I-80s Elk Mountain route. 

My wife Chris and sister Eileen joined me in my car. Brother-in-law Brian, daughter Annie and sister Mary rode in the rental. We first drove to Laramie. Annie wanted to show off her future campus. We parked in the War Memorial Stadium lot. Our visitors were impressed with the "breaking through" monumental sculpture and the big motto writ on across the stadium wall: "The world needs more cowboys." I really didn't want to get into some of the blowback the phrase caused. What about cowgirls?  Will this turn off Native American and other minority students? And what cowboys, exactly, are you speaking of? Cowboy Joe? John Wayne? The drovers in "Lonesome Dove?" The thousands of UW grads who couldn't find jobs in their home state and fled to non-cowboy states such as Illinois and Florida? Who? What?

We toured the big welcome center named for a rich donor. This is how it is on college campuses and I have no problems with it. Inside, I saw names of patrons who also support the arts and that made me happy as UW has great arts facilities and faculty. 

I noticed the library in the fireplace room and settled in to read through some of the old UW annuals. I was taken with the 1954 volume. Its first eight pages were photos of campus and Wyoming scenes that looked like blueline prints of 3D film. There is a pocket in the book's inside front cover that once held 3D glasses. How fun is that? 3D movies had hit the market in the early 1950s and they were all the rage when UW students assembled the annual in 1954. "It Came from Outer Space" (1953) and "Creature from the Black Lagoon" (1954). I was also surprised by some of the other 3D titles listed on IMBD, "Kiss Me Kate" and "Hondo" among them. I don't have a real good feeling about Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor and The Duke coming at me in three dimensions. "They called him Hondo -- hot-blooded as the Plains that bred him. silent as gunsmoke, a stranger to all but the surly dog at his side." OK by me, but the dog better not die.

We ate lunch under the trees and toured the UW Art Museum, one of my favorite places. Some exhibits were closing down to make room for the fall crop of artists. But the ones still up were fascinating. I really got a kick out of  David Bradley's 2001 panoramic and satiric painting of the Santa Fe Indian Market (going on now). I was entranced by Collin Parson's "Light Ellipse" at the entrance to the galleries. The 12-feet-high ellipse is made of PVC panel and backlit by LED lights and changes colors as you watch. Parson's exhibit is one of the museum's fall highlights which includes visits and talks by the Denver artist. "Blind" by Holly Roberts was part of the museum's horse exhibit. This was one of the more experimental works in "The West on Horseback" exhibit that included paintings by Hans Klieber and black-and-white ranch photos by Elsa Spear Byron.  

After a quick tour of downtown we headed for the mountains along Route 130 through Centennial. The high prairie seemed very green for the first week in August. It's usually lightly-browned as beach sand, sometimes as brown as the Wyoming Brown you see all across the UW campus. A summer squall cut into our sightseeing. Also, there was that brown cloud that has found its way here from Oregon and California. The rain let up when we reached Lake Marie so we released our visitors into the wild, now with that fresh post-rainstorm scent. Lake Marie probably one of the most photographed site in Wyoming outside our national parks and the country's first national monument. Sometimes you can catch it as still and mirror-lake and, if the light is just right, you can shoot a fit-for-framing reflection of the surrounding mountains. Laramie's Doc Thissen once showed me such a photo, one of his.

On the way downhill we passed Brush Creek Ranch and I thought about C.J. Box's novel "The Disappeared" in which some nefarious goings-on happen at a guest ranch eerily similar to Brush Creek. Other fictional nogoodniks are haunting the Wolf Hotel in downtown Saratoga, a place where Game Warden/Sleuth Joe Pickett bellies up to the bar on a frigid winter evening and sips a Black Tooth Saddle Bronc Ale. Eileen, Brian, and Mary toured the Wolf and the rest of the town. 

"So who lives here?" I've asked myself that question many times, usually when passing places such as Hanna and  Jeffrey City. I know writers from Hanna and people in Jeffrey City who kept its arts council alive even when the town was dying. These towns also house coal-miners, wind-farm workers, retirees and meth heads. Just like any place in the Rocky Mountain West. As I drive back to Cheyenne, I look out on the landscape and marvel that anyone can make a living in this place. It inspires -- I think of Linda Lillegraven's wonderful landscape paintings -- and it also causes people to lose their minds, as happens in real life and in Annie Proulx's short stories (Proulx spent many years in WYO and once lived in Centennial). 

The setting sun ignites the clouds over the Laramie Range as we drive the last miles to home. It occurs to me that nobody in our two-car caravan sees Wyoming as I do. We all see and experience life differently. Some of us translate it (or try to) in the work we do. For others, it is memories and stories, a photograph that they unearth decades later and remember that August day in Wyoming spent with family. 

That was some day. 

Writing and editing, editing and writing, writing and...

Editing and writing. Writing and editing. The two are inseparable. Younger writers, such as myself a half-century ago, write something down and pronounce it finished. I wrote my first novel that way. It got me an agent but it was never published due to the fact it was not a very good novel because it lacked a persnickety editor. If you insist on reading the manuscript, you can find it in the Colorado State University Library Special Collections under "Future Wars." It used to share a bunker with a very fine Vietnam War Literature section. Look for that under "Past but not Forgotten Wars."

I've edited many of my pieces since then. I've had others edit my work, profs and student colleagues in the CSU MFA program and the writing critique group I've belonged to for a dozen years. I wasn't always pleased with the comments. That's one of the things about the process. It's not always pleasant. It's the only way to grow.

For the pasty couple years, I've been writing art reviews for Wyofile's Studio Wyoming Review. It's a joy to go into a museum, gallery or studio and learn about art. You'd think that after 25 years at the Wyoming Arts Council where art was on the menu every day, I'd have enough art to last me during my dotage. But the life of an arts administrator features a lot of administration and very little time to appreciate art. These days, I can take on an assignment and spend plenty of time appreciating art and talking with the artists. A half-hour discussion with an artist can tell you so much more than any artist's statement plastered on a gallery wall. 

My final SWR piece appeared last Friday, a book review: Exploring the roots of Basque poetry from a Wyoming perspective. WyoFile editors are discontinuing SWR on June 30. They plan to devote more time and resources to features on the state's many daunting challenges. Recent examples are Dustin Bleizeffer's two stories:  'Love it or leave: The choices facing Wyoming's youth and Portraits of Wyo youth: Six visions of a future in the state. The brain drain of young people leaving the state has been going on for a long time but it may be about to be an epidemic. The articles left me depressed as I already have a son who sought opportunities in Tucson and my daughter looks outside Wyoming for her career as a photographer. Wyoming is one of the most photogenic places on the planet. But as a wise artist once said, "You can't eat the scenery." 

Fill out this short Facebook poll to give us some ideas about where SWR can go from here.

I came to today's blog with the idea to compare/contrast my latest review, the one I submitted and the edited one. I wondered if my version would be superior to the edited one. In some ways, I am still that sensitive young writer. I put both versions side-by-side on my big screen. I read each line. Damned if the revised version wasn't better. 

Blogs in their purest form are not supposed to be heavily edited. If I understand correctly the Blogosphere's many fungible rules, changes you make after a blog is posted must be noted. That is left entirely in the blogger's hands. We can be trusted with many things. Editing is a sacred trust and I treat it accordingly.