11/15/19

Makom : the "Place" : Milwaukee "Place" Photo Projects


 Makom     
"the Place"    
      and the Milwaukee "Place" Photography Projects         

The place of recognition . . . the final stage of meditation . . .
is the goal of your [inner, yogic] search. When you reach
this place, the world will reveal its divine mystery 
before your eyes. . .  then you will remember
the Upanishadic mantra:  "It is God who
pervades the form of the universe."
Swami Muktananda, The Perfect Relationship 
                             
Introduction
I discovered the concept of Makom in the book by Thomas Hess, entitled Barnett Newman (1971).  Hess introduced the Jewish concept Makom in an attempt to explain Newman's life transforming experience in 1949 while visiting several Native American Indian Mounds in Ohio.  Newman (b. 1905 - 1970), one of truly great New York School abstract painters of the 1960's, whose work is the very embodiment of a meditative state of mind, tried to write about his experience in an unpublished 1949 monologue entitled "Prologue for a New Esthetic."  Here is a brief except:

 "Standing before the Miamisburg mound, or walking amidst the Fort Ancient and Newark earthworks--surrounded by these simple walls of mud--I was confounded by the absoluteness of the sensation, their self-evident simplicity . . . "  

 Hess informs us of a later conversation he had with Newman in which the painter describes in more personal detail what he felt:

" . . . a sense of place, a holy place.  Looking at the site you feel, Here I am, here . . .  and out beyond there [beyond the limits of the site] there is chaos, nature, rivers, landscapes . . . but here you get a sense of your own presence  . . . "

In Hess's book, published in 1971, he offers an interpretation of Newman's 1949 experience of the mounds in Ohio based on a later statement Newman had written, in 1963, regarding an architectural model he had created for a synagogue in which he used the words Makom and mound.  Hess refers to the word Makom at first only parenthetically, then later, he goes on to define it:

 Newman evidently was alluding to the Jewish concept of Makom, of "place" or "location" or "site" (Newman refers directly to [Makom] in a 1963 statement about his model for a synagogue, in which the temple itself is designated as Makom, and he calls the "place" where members of the congregation stand to read from the Torah a "mound").

Hess continues:  

Makom is place.  Hamakom is, literally, "the place."  It is also one of the secret names of God and one of the poetic locutions which the Torah uses to avoid pronouncing [God's] name or spelling out its letters.  Thus Moses would not say: "The Lord spoke to me . . . " but "The Place spoke to me. . . "  

 For the early Kabbalists, as for Aristotle, "place" and "space" were identical.  There was no such thing as an abstract, metaphysical "space."  Everything was "place," even heaven, and for the Jews "the place" is imbued with the transcendental presence of God.  (Thomas Hess from the 1971 publication Barnett Newman)

 *

 This brief account of Newman's encounter with his own sacred Presence amongst the Ohio Native Indian Mounds struck me in a very personal, revelatory, transformative way when I read Hess's book as a graduate Student in the early 1972.  It seemed as if I was recognizing some essential truth that had already existed within me.  And this is precisely what Carl Jung's idea of synchronicity is about, and what Stieglitz's idea of equivalence is about.  

(Note: I focused my 1972 MFA written thesis on Jung's ideas of synchronicity and the symbol, and Stieglitz's idea of equivalence. See my blog pages dedicated the Symbol and my written thesis: The Symbolic Photograph : A Means To Self Knowledge.  I made no mention of Makom in my thesis.)

My discovery of the Makom concept awakened memories of my early childhood days in a small town in Ohio named Piqua, which is a Shawnee place name taken from a local Shawnee clan's creation story which tells of "a man who rose from the ashes." I remember seeing elementary school plays that reenacted this mystery story.  And though the Indian mounds in Miamisburg are only an hour's drive away from Piqua, and though I have no memory of ever visiting those mounds, I did have--in my back yard in Ohio--my very own "sacred mound site." 

          Two snapshots (made by my mom?) of  the"mound" next to her flower bed; and me and "my" block at the corner of our neighbor's garage    

My mom often liked to tell the story of how, as a young child, I would sit on a concrete block at the corner of our neighbor's garage which was situated on a mound that rose up from my mom's flower garden.  She even had photographs of me with "my" concrete block!  She said I would sit very still, very quietly on that block, in "my place" on the mound, as if I were in deep thought, of perhaps daydreaming.

After reading about Makom, and Newman's experience at the Indian mounds, I believe practically every photograph I have ever made since then has been influenced by the idea, and, indeed, by my experience of Makom: "the 'Place' where God is present."   My desire to make a photograph would be often sparked by the subtle awareness of a divine presence in the place or thing or event I was perceiving.  And after the picture was printed, and I had carefully contemplated the image, if I did not experience that sense of holy presence in the photograph, I would usually discard the photograph.  

(Note: snapshots of my childhood's backyard, including the ones above, and rereading Hess's book about Barnett Newman later in 1978 initiated an important photography project The Negative Print Series which I will write more about later, below.)  
from The Lake Series 1981-82  (click on the image to enlarge)

 In the spring of 1975, three years before I read the Barnett Newman book a second time, I was invited to come to Milwaukee for an interview regarding a teaching position in photography.  One of the Art faculty was driving me around the area near the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, showing me the sites.  We stopped and got out of the car and walked toward the edge of a very high bluff that overlooked Lake Michigan.  When I stood before that vast, awesome space . . . of water, light and sky . . .  I experienced my heart leaping out into that space which seemed so palpably filled with a luminous sacred presence.  My entire being became enlivened by the experience; and in that moment I secretly promised myself that if I was offered the teaching position in Milwaukee I would photograph the Lake until I was able to created a body of work that functioned as a visual equivalent for that deeply heartfelt experience.  (I did get that teaching job in 1975: see my project The Lake Series 1981-82.)  
*

In 1987 my wife Gloria and I met for the first time Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, a yogic saint from India, in a two day yoga meditation program.  Her teacher, Swami Muktananda, had established an ashram in New York State, and at the time of his death (1982) he passed the power of the Siddha Lineage on to his disciple, Gurumayi.  Since then she has served as the living head of the Siddha Yoga Path.   

 In that meditation program with Gurumayi I had an intense experience of her grace, her transcendent state of being.  My experience was located in two "places" simultaneously: I felt the divine presence within my own Self--in my Heart--and within Gurumayi.  (For a full detailed account of this experience, visit my project: Photography and Yoga)   

After that experience with Gurumayi, Gloria and I committed ourselves to the practices of Siddha Yoga Meditation and we have continued the practices to this day.  It has occurred to me recently that every meaningful event that has occurred within my Creative Process in Photography--beginning with my Epiphany as a ten year old boy; my attraction to Stieglitz's idea of the Equivalent; my fascination with Jung's ideas of the Self, the Symbol, the concept of Synchronicity and then my discovery of the concept of Makom--all this had been preparing me, it now seems to me, for my life-transforming meeting with Gurumayi and Siddha Yoga Meditation.  

There occurred a gradual merging over the years of my  practice of photographic picture-making with my practices of Siddha Yoga Meditation.  The experience of the divine presence has extended into all aspects of my everyday life; and my Creative Process as a person and as a photographer have become more and more clearly focused on the Oneness of Being.  Indeed, the symbolic photograph is the very embodiment, visually, of the Oneness of Being. 



from the Steve Lacy Series 1977-78

 The Early Milwaukee "Place" projects
I have lived in many "places" throughout my life: Piqua, Ohio; Portland, Indiana; Rochester, New York; Chicago, Illinois; New York City; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Atlanta, Georgia; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and currently I live in Canandaigua, New York.  Each of these place names--of human settlements--represents an essential aspect of my unfolding life as a Creative Process; each place has had its own unique character, its own historical, sociological, psychological and physiological identities; and each has impacted my life in important, probably necessary ways.  

I lived and taught and helped my wife raise our two children in Milwaukee, Wisconsin over a period of 33 years--from 1975 to 2007, when I retired from teaching and then a year later moved to Canandaigua, NY.   I lived in Milwaukee longer than in any other place I have ever lived.  In the first fifteen of those 33 years I created seven projects that are (in varying ways) about Milwaukee as a "Place."  In 1999-2001 I added an additional project.  Here is the list of projects:   
  
     The Persephone Series, 1975-76
     xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
     The Garage Series, 1999-2001


The Steve Lacy Series, 1977-78 is included in my list of Milwaukee "Place" projects primarily because the subject matter I photographed (East Side street scenes, neighborhood front yards, back yards, alleys, etc.) related to Milwaukee as a Place.  However "Place" in terms of Makom was not on my mind when I was working on that particular project; the music of Steve Lacy had inspired the photographs.  I've also included the later project, The Garage Series, 1999-2001 as part of my Milwaukee "Place" projects because the garage images function for me as "character portraits" of Milwaukee as a place and the people who lived in it.  

It may be most accurate to say that none of the projects on my Milwaukee "Place" list are about "Place" in the way that we usually think of the word, as associated with human settlements of a particular social character.  If you read the introductory statements for each of the projects, you will see I had other ideas in mind.   Alfred Stieglitz's (and Minor White's) poetic idea of the Equivalent had generally dominated my photography throughout my undergraduate and graduate years of photographic study (1964-68 and 1969-72).

As a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (1969-72) I became very involved with the ideas of depth psychologist Carl G. Jung.  His research into the Creative Process as it related to Medieval Alchemy, and his ideas about the Self, the Symbol and Synchronicity expanded my understanding of Stieglitz's idea of the Equivalent.  I devoted my MFA written thesis to Jung's ideas.  (See: The Symbolic Photograph : A Means to Self-Knowledge.) 

I read Barnett Newman by Thomas Hess in 1972, while still in graduate school; then I re-read in 1978.  It was in the chapter entitled Onement that I re-discovered the Makom concept of "Place" that became a major turning point in my Creative Process.  (Newman did a series of paintings entitled "Onement." At the end of this blog page I have reproduced the first painting in his series.)

*

Persephone, Queen of the Underworld


My first photography project completed in Milwaukee was not a Milwaukee "Place" project.   The Persephone Series, 1975-76 was about a mythic "Place," the darkly lit and psychologically troubled interior "underworld" of Hades--the "land of the dead."  This project is also the last in a series of Three Multiple-Exposure Related Projects.    

 The second project I completed in Milwaukee, The Steve Lacy Series, 1977-78 was only indirectly about Milwaukee.  The work I did for the Steve Lacy Series got me out of Hades and into the crystalline light of Milwaukee's East Side, which is near the University and only six or so blocks from Lake Michigan.  I was attracted to front and back yards and alleys.  The work however was for me never about "place" in the Makom sense of the word.  Rather the work had intuitively become a visual response to to music I had been listening to, the music of Steve Lacy.    

(L) My dad and me, in front of hanging laundry  (R) our backyard with hanging laundry.  
                                                                 
The third photography project I completed in Milwaukee, the Negative Print Series : Memories of Childhood 1978-80 was the first project in which I consciously photographed with the Makom project in mind.  The project was initiated by a synchronistic intersection of two important events:  1) my re-discovery of the concept of Makom in the Thomas Hess book, Barnett Newman; and 2) my discovery of an old box of snapshots in my mother's closet which contained images of my childhood backyard in Piqua, Ohio--images of laundry hanging on lines, flower gardens, a picture of me about to sit on "my" concrete block at the corner of our neighbor's garage which was atop a small earth mound.  

(Note: the garage became a major theme in my work in the 2000.  It started as part of my series of Studies projects, then later when I made a digital version of the project, the images expanded in scale and I suspended the garage images in black space with the music of (Note: the Garage project was also inspired by music, in this case music composed by the American composer Morton Feldman.  Visit The Garage Series, 1999-2001)  

 The old snapshots I found were often overexposed, nearly all white, almost blindingly brilliant.  They were for me transformative images of my childhood experiences of Place, and it was this idea that inspired the making of negative print images--internally luminous images which would become a metaphor (for me) of the way personal memories become transformed over time with something like a magical "psychic" luminosity.  In my negative print imagery there is an emphasis on the inversion of shadow tonalities.  That is to say, the shadow tones in the original photographic image become turned inside-out such that they become the "source" of light which illuminates the negative print as a whole, as if from within. 

from the Memories of Childhood (Negative Print) Series 1978-80
The "interior" luminosity in the Negative Print Memories of Childhood photographs became a metaphor for the "transcendental" sense of Makom: "the 'Place' where God is present."   The imagery is quite abstract, based mostly in my nostalgic remembrance of experiences of place related to my childhood.  The project is an important body of work for me, the first which relates directly, consciously to the Makom concept, even though the images rarely if at all provide a literal description to Milwaukee places I photographed in the physical world.    

 Similarly, the 1980-81 Intimate Landscape photographs, which were made in Milwaukee's Industrial Valley, are about "place" in the Makom sense of the work.  But the work does not provide a literal description of the Milwaukee places in which I photographed.   

*

 It is in the last six of my Milwaukee projects (listed again, below) that "Place" is addressed simultaneously by the concept of Makom and by Milwaukee as a "Place" with its own unique personal character.  The Negative Print Memories of Childhood project; the Lake Series, the Images of Eden [Milwaukee County Park Photographs] project; the City Places project; the Milwaukee River project; and finally the Garage project, are direct visual responses to Milwaukee "Places," even if their primary focus (for me) as a picture-maker was about Makom in the sense of:  "The Place spoke to me . . .  The Place where God is Present."


The Milwaukee Makom "Place"  
Photography Projects



Extending the idea of Makom to "Things" 
Around 1983-84 I read a book by Robert Bly entitled News of the Universe.  His chapter about "object poems," or "thing poems" had a profound influence on me at that time.  It was another one of those major turning points in my Creative Process.  Essentially the idea is that the things of the world are alive with the same consciousness, and filled with the same divine presence as human beings.  The Thing-Centered Photography Projects simply extend the idea of Makom from "space" and "place" to "things."     

 The idea began to unfold in the Family Life, 1985-88 project, and then it just flourished in the Studies projects, which includes The Garage Series 1999-2001, part of my collection of Milwaukee "Place" projects.   
Makom, Time, Synchronicity & Grace  
In Siddha Yoga the presence of God is understood to be all pervasive.  The ancient text known as the Shiva Sutras state unequivocally:  "there is nothing that is not Shiva" [God, the divine Self of all].  Everything in the universe, including Time is a created form of the divine Presence.

I have already mentioned (above) Carl Jung's theory of synchronicity which is an important aspect of my Creative Process that relates directly to Time.   The theory addresses the acausal "falling together" in time (or the acausal, graceful intersection of time-space events) which one perceives to be not only personally meaningful but, more importantly, profoundly revelatory (often of unconscious or transcendent content).  Synchronicity is essentially an experience of grace in which the perceiver and the perceived become One in the act of perception; in other words, "seeing with the Eye of the Heart," seeing with grace, is an experience of The Oneness of Being.  

 Just as a symbol in the Jungian sense is an image that conjoins corresponding inner and outer world counterparts into a single Imaginal Unitary Reality, so is synchronicity a perceptual revelation of the Oneness of Being.  Barnett Newman's experience of standing before the sacred Indian Mounds and feeling his own sacred Presence (Here, I am . . .) is a perfect example of the experience of synchronicity, an experience of grace in which Newman perceived the sacredness of a Place in the physical world simultaneously deep within his own Self.  

I had an experience at the Grand Canyon that relates to Barnett Newman's epiphany.   See my blog essay: Seeing the Grand Canyon.
________________________

Epilogue

Another major influence for me was Gaston Bachelard's book The Poetics of Space. The entire book is remarkable, but I especially resonate to the chapters "Corners" and "Intimate Immensity."  I will give you a few quotes from these two chapters, then close with a Siddha Yoga teaching.

I am the space where I am.
Noel Aranaud from L'etat d'ebauche

Every object invested with intimate space
becomes the center of all space.
Gaston Bachelard

In a study of of images of intimacy we shall pose the problem
of the poetics of the house. . .  With the house image we are
in possession of a veritable  principle of psychological
integration.   . . .   The house image would appear
to have become the topography of our intimate
being.  . . .  Our soul is an abode.  . . .  The
house images move in both directions:
they are in us as much as 
we are are in them.
Gaston Bachelard, Introduction


*

In the Siddha Yoga teachings, there is a word darshan that means divine vision.  The word could appropriately be applied to Barnett Newman's experience at the Indian Mounds of Ohio, my experience standing before the vastness of space of Lake Michigan, or the Grand Canyon, and my experience of Gurumayi's spiritual presence, her grace, when I first encountered her in a meditation program in 1987. 

 The word darshan can refer literally to seeing a saint or a deity, a sacred Icon, a Symbolic Photograph; it can also refer to an inner experience of one's own divinity, the Self of All, the Oneness of Being.  Darshan is an experience of recognition of the divine Reality that exists beneath, behind, above, below, within and surrounding any and all of the things of outer world.  Swami Muktananda writes in his book The Perfect Relationship:

The place of recognition . . . the final stage of meditation . . .
is the goal of your [inner, yogic] search. When you reach
this place, the world will reveal its divine mystery 
before your eyes. . .  then you will remember
the Upanishadic mantra:  "It is God who
pervades the form of the universe."
Swami Muktananda, The Perfect Relationship  


 In homage to Barnett Newman, I offer these words and his painting entitled Onement, I:


Here, I am 
Here, in this Place
imbued with a sacred Presence   
that is radiantly alive within me, as me   


Barnett Newman,  Onement 1    1948
oil on canvas and oil on masking tape on canvas 
27" x 16"  (click on image to enlarge)



This project was announced on my blog's   
Welcome Page on November 15, 2019   
and revised many times thereafter.  
Final Edit: Mid & Late February, 2022
  

Related Project

Seeing The Grand Canyon An essay about Perception & Projection by Steven Foster
Visit the Welcome Page to my Departing Landscape photography blog which includes the complete listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and much much more. 





at

11/9/19

Snapshot: Stories of My Life In Photography & Teaching

  

 SNAPSHOTS
 Stories of My Life
  In Photography & Teaching 

Steven D. Foster

Introduction
In June 2019 my wife Gloria and I went to Milwaukee to celebrate the sixth birthday of our grandson River.  When John Sobczak, Director of the Alice Wilds Gallery heard we were coming he set up a meeting with Tyler Friedman, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum of Wisconsin Art so that the three of us could look at my photographs together.  It seemed that Tyler was looking for photographs that could be exhibited in their "Downtown Gallery" located in the lobby of the Saint Kate Arts Hotel in Milwaukee where this year's Society of Photographic Education Midwest Chapter Conference was to be held in late October, 2019.  

While in Milwaukee in June I also met with Jon Horvath and John Sobczak--conspirators in bringing about a mini-retrospective of my work to Milwaukee at the Alice Wilds gallery in March-April of 2018.  (See my project The Rising Sun ~ Prelude To An Exhibition, 2018)   At our meeting--which took place a few days after my meeting with Tyler and John--Jon Horvath told me that he was on the Planning Committee for the SPE Conference, and that the Committee had just taken a vote on the nominees for the "Honored Educator" award to be announced at the Conference.  I had been chosen for the award.  Would I accept the award and come to Milwaukee in late October to say a few words? 

 This blog project includes a revised and expanded version of the talk I gave in the concluding session of the SPE Conference on October 26, 2019 plus some additional contextual information regarding the Conference and other related events that took place during our week long visit to Milwaukee, including some special announcements that were made at the closing of the Conference, a mini-exhibition of my Steve Lacy Series photographs, the Gallery Talks associated with the exhibition, and some special moments spent with our grandson River.  
SNAPSHOTS
Stories of My Life
In Photography & Teaching 
The following text is an edited and expanded version of  
a talk I presented at the Society for Photographic
Education Midwest Chapter Conference 
held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin 
October 24-27, 2019
to learn more details 
about the Conference 
Dedication
I am dedicating this presentation—with loving gratitude—to three of the most important teachers in my life: my wife Gloria, our son Shaun, and our daughter Jessica.  Being a husband and a father has been a full-time educational experience for me, and that experience has contributed in untold ways to my photography and my teaching.


Introduction 
I would like to share with you a few snapshot-like stories about how I came to be a photographer and a teacher of photography.  When I look back over my life, it is amazing to me how I have come to this very moment, standing before you now as this year’s Honored Educator.  As I've contemplated my life in photography and teaching, I came to see with more awareness, and with more gratitude, the web of connections between so many people that has made it possible for me to be here with you tonight. 

You will notice that I use the word “grace” many times in my presentation.  For me the word is synonymous with the Impersonal, fully alive and Conscious Creative Power of the Universe, which I also refer to often as “my Creative Process.”

* 

Like many of my photography students at UW-Milwaukee, I came from a working class family.  This has helped me have a special empathy for those students who would come to my classes thinking they were not creative enough, not good enough, not talented enough in any way, and who often looked exhausted from the jobs they had been holding while trying to work their way thru college.

Because the photography program I created here at UW-Milwaukee (beginning in 1975) was situated in an Art Department within a State University, I felt it was especially important to teach photography from a “liberal arts” perspective; that is to say, as a way of exploring a broad range of ideas and photographic experiences that would provide the student with a means of accessing Self-knowledge.  

 Truth be told, I could not have taught photography otherwise for Self-knowledge was what I have most cared about as an artist.  From the time I was a graduate student (1969-72) I believed in the power of the Creative Process, and I believed that what I had to offer students could be of good use to them in any kind of career they pursued, for it is everyone’s birthright to have a life guided by the integrity of their own Creative Process, a life lived in direct relationship to the Creative Power of the Universe.


The Stories:  My life is an unfolding Creative Process
I was born in a small town named Piqua, Ohio.  My dad worked for the city; he worked his way up from sweeping streets to having a responsible job in Piqua’s Electric Power Plant.  One day something fell on my dad’s back at the plant and the injury he suffered manifested multiple medical complications.  In August 1955, just weeks before my 10th birthday, my dad became very ill and had to be hospitalized.

I stayed with my cousin and my Aunt Lilly & Uncle Bob so that my mom could be with my dad at the hospital.  One day, as I was waiting for my cousin to return from a trip to the drugstore with my Aunt, he all-of-a-sudden came running up to me very excitedly.  He was holding in his hand a batch of snapshots.  When he offered them to me to look at . . . I experienced what you might call an EPIPHANY: I knew with absolute certainty—in that very moment—that I wanted to be a photographer.  

A Fire had been ignited within me that has never gone out.

Several days later I came down with a fever.  I felt cold, even though it was a very hot summer day.  My Aunt took me and my cousin to a park concert that night, but I began shivering so intensely that I had to be taken back to the house and put to bed.

Later that night I woke myself up: I was hitting my pillow with my fist, harder and harder . . . faster and faster . . .    Eventually the hitting stopped, and I just lay in bed waiting for the morning light.   

As I was listening to the doves beginning to sing their mournful songs in the nearby woods, I heard footsteps coming slowly up the stairs.  My Aunt told me that my dad had died during the night.  Of course, I had already known that, intuitively; and I believe I actually experienced my dad’s last heartbeats.

That was my first awakening to the fact that we humans are connected to each other in ways the mind cannot understand.  And it has been my experience over and over again that indeed we are connected in an ineffable sacred space known commonly as the Heart.

*

The loss of my dad was very painful for me in the months that followed, but I took refuge in reading about photography.  I became consumed with wanting to know more and more about it.  Not only did I look at photo magazines and library books, I began contemplating our Sears and Roebuck catalogue—in particular, the section on cameras and darkroom equipment.  

Photography became my constant companion, my safe haven.  And as I grew older, photography would become for me—in many different ways—a means of liberation.

*
    
I asked my mom for a film developing kit and a contact printing frame for a Christmas present.  She in turn asked my Uncle Dave to help her get the equipment and supplies I needed.  Fortunately he had spent time in the Armed Forces in a photography unite, so he was able to help me get started with my darkroom, and he was always there for me whenever I needed him in future times of crisis.  By New Years Day, 1956, I was in our basement developing film and making contact prints.

*

My mom re-married a few years later to a salesman who lived in Portland Indiana 60 miles away from Piqua.  She sold her house and we moved to Portland; and within a year their relationship became fraught with multiple difficulties—and it appeared to me that I had become part of the problem.  I began dreaming of getting out of Portland as soon as possible. 

After living in Portland Indiana for over four years, I left after graduating from High School.  Many in my Graduation Class were planning to get married, have kids and work in a nearby factory, or get a teaching degree at Ball State University in nearby Muncie Indiana.  Settling down in Portland Indiana was certainly not what I wanted to do.
W. Eugene Smith, The Pittsburg Story @1955 

There were two important photographic influences in my life as a High School student in Portland Indiana.  One of them was W. Eugene Smith and his Pittsburg Story which had been published in the 1959 Popular Photography Annual.  Smith's dark and moody-poetic photo essay deeply impressed me.


from The Persephone Series 1976-77

 (Note: later in life W. Eugene Smith and I would connect again through my photography in an unexpected way.  In 1977 I submitted a selection of my Persephone Series photographs to the Wisconsin Arts Board for their consideration of an Artist Fellowship.  I didn't know that W. Eugene Smith was one of the invited Jurors, but later I was told that he was largely responsible for the $2,000 Artist Fellowship I was awarded that year.)

The other major influence during my High School years was the Museum of Modern Art’s publication of The Family of Man.  For my Senior English Project I created an Exhibition of photographs inspired by the paperback version which I had been studying religiously throughout the year.  I took quotes from the publication and placed them under each of my photographs which were pinned up on the back wall of the class room.   

That exhibition was a turning point in my life.  Because I held my English teacher in very high regard, his supportive responses to my project helped give me the confidence I needed to find ways of getting out of Portland and learning more about photography.

I applied to some schools that offered various kinds of photography programs.  There were very few in the early 1960’s, and I knew very little about art in those days; I just knew in my Heart that I wanted to be a photographer.  The Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, NY was the only school that accepted me.  In retrospect, RIT was without doubt the best photography program of its kind in the country, and the very best option for me, though of course I didn't know it then.  RIT offered several photo majors: in Photographic Science; in Photographic Illustration & Fine Arts; and there was a program in Professional (Commercial) Photography, which I was at first contemplating getting into.  The only problem was the expense.  RIT was very expensive.

I had applied for and received a small scholarship from the Society of Photo-journalists that would be applied to the first semester’s tuition at RIT.   And my mother had saved most of the Social Security money she had received from my dad’s death to help pay for my first year of college.  My mom had not been able to finish High School (she instead worked in a factory which supplied our troops with warm socks); but she had made a promise to herself that my younger sister and I would at least be given a starting chance at a college education. 

In the early to mid 1960’s it was possible for a young man like myself to work his way through college.  Two summers before going to RIT I worked in a Portland canning factory; and the summer before I left for RIT, I worked for a roofing company putting shingles on barns.    

The day finally arrived when my mom and my step-father drove me to Rochester to help me get situated in my dorm room at RIT.  My mom was in tears when they drove away . . . and though I would miss her, at last I felt a sense of liberation that I had been longing for.
*

I was fortunate in being able to get a job at the RIT bookstore—because that’s how I met Roger Mertin, who was also working there.  He was a Junior in RIT’s Fine Arts photography program at the time (Roger would later become a nationally recognized photographer), and he was also taking Nathan Lyon’s very first Home Workshop.  As Roger and I became friends, we started looking at each other’s photographs.  He could see my passion for photography and that I was making some pretty interesting photographs, even as a Freshman, so he encouraged me to take the Fine Arts Photography Program in my second year, plus Nathan Lyons’ Home Workshop! 

(Note: Minor White was teaching at RIT at this time; I was fortunate to be able to take one course with Minor before he left Rochester to teach at MIT.)

My friend, Jim Erwin and I took Nathan’s Home Workshop together.  In fact, we loved it so much we took it two years in a row.  I believe the home workshops were Nathan's way of testing out his teaching ideas in preparation for the school he had been dreaming of creating: The Visual Studies Workshop.  Nathan became one of the founding members of SPE at that time, and he was its first Director.  Jim and I attended one of the earliest SPE national conferences.    

At the time we were taking the workshops, Nathan was still working at George Eastman House as Director of Exhibitions.  I loved Eastman House: Nathan had put on some very important exhibitions in those two years; I loved all the new photo books on display; and the ritual of viewing original prints in the permeant collection (with cotton gloves) was quite breathtaking for me.  

 I would always go up to the second floor during each of my visits to pay homage to the ongoing exhibition of the Masters of Photography—which included many of my favorite photographers: W. Eugene Smith, Robert Frank, Harry Callahan, Minor White, Edward Weston and Alfred Stieglitz.  Going to Eastman House was—for me—like going to a Holy Shrine.  And I did go quite often, especially during my second year, when I took Beaumont Newhall's The History of Photography course, an RIT requirement for fine art photography majors.

Nathan invited me up to his office on the top floor of Eastman House a few times to see boxes of photographs sent to him from people like Gary Winogrand and Mario Giacomelli.  And in the summer following my first workshop with Nathan he helped me get a job working in Eastman House's darkroom, down in the basement.  I was extremely happy to be part of Eastman House, and I was overjoyed (with feelings of liberation!) at being able to stay in Rochester that summer rather than having to go back to Portland Indiana to work.  
  Harry Callahan, 1951, Eleanor, Chicago  (click on the image to enlarge)
  
In Nathan's living room--where we held our workshop sessions--there was a framed photograph on the wall which I looked at closely every time we met.  It was a multiple-exposure photograph by Harry Callahan—an image of his wife Elenor standing in front of a sliding door, her form silhouetted against an illuminated background and centered in a larger dark space of highlighted bush branches.  One night I told Nathan how much I liked the image, but that I didn’t understand what it was about—it was such a mysterious image for me.  When I asked him if he could tell me what it meant, he said, “Maybe in five years you’ll understand.” 

He was right!  Four years later I would be married to Gloria (who was the sister of the woman my friend Jim Erwin had married).  And then two years later, while I was a Graduate Student in Photography at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, Gloria would become pregnant with Shaun, our first of two children—something Gloria’s doctor had told us was NOT likely to be possible. (See my New Mexico project.)
  
The Callahan photograph helped me realize that the most interesting photographs (for me) were those that I could not understand, images that held within them a mystery that invited different interpretations and renewed revelations over time.  Later, as a graduate student, I would write my MFA thesis paper about such images, which I identified as Symbolic Photographs.
Nathan Lyons, from Under the Sun, 1960  (click on the image to enlarge)

After studying with Nathan the second year, Jim and I felt prepared to move on to Chicago—to study with Aaron Siskind.  Nathan had charged $100 dollars for each Workshop which ran throughout the nine month academic year.  When we told Nathan we were going to Chicago to study with Aaron he gave each of us—as a parting gift—one of his photographs.  I chose an image that I had seen published in the book Under the Sun : The Abstract Art of Camera Vision, an image that reminded me of a pulsating heart.

*

In June of 1966 Jim and Phyllis, (Gloria's sister) got married just before moving to Chicago where Jim would begin his Graduate studies with Aaron Siskind at the Institute of Design.  I felt that I had to move on as well for at least three reasons: because Minor White had left RIT to teach at MIT, I had spent two full years studying with Nathan in his Home Workshop in Rochester, and Jim was going to be in Chicago with his wife Phyllis.  

 I was accepted at the Institute of Design where I hoped to complete my undergraduate study with Aaron Siskind in two years.  It was my additional good fortune to discover that I would also be studying with Wynn Bullock my first year in Chicago, for he had been invited to teach at the ID as a Visiting Artist.

 I paid my tuition in Chicago by working on the loading docks at UPS during the summer, then during the school year I worked in the accounting room from 6pm to 11pm each weeknight counting pick-up sheets.  UPS paid well, and counting pick-up sheets was easier than working on the docks; but I would often go to classes the next day exhausted from trying to study late into the night.  (I would get to my apartment around midnight after a 30-40 minute bus ride through a very rough area of Chicago.)  

I saved quite a lot of money on rent by sharing an apartment with Keith Smith.  Jim had met Keith in one of Aaron Siskind's graduate photo classes and invited Keith over to his and Phyllis's apartment for dinner one night to meet me and Larry McPherson, and then look at each other's photographs.  Keith was looking for a roommate to help pay the rent and asked if I would be interested.  The apartment was in a wonderful Polish and Mexican neighborhood in Chicago’s South-West Side, and close to an elevated rapid transit stop.  Keith--a very quiet and private person--was one of the sweetest, most patient and generous people I ever knew.  His concentrated work ethic, and his remarkably inventive explorations into hand-made artist books was an inspiration for me.
*

After five years, in two photography programs, in two cities, I finally earned my undergraduate degree at the Institute of Design.  I then moved to New York City where Gloria was to be studying art at Pratt Institute (in Brooklyn) that coming school year.  I wanted a chance to further develop a relationship with her that was just beginning to blossom in Chicago.

A friend of mine from RIT days, who was working for a commercial photographer in a studio on 28th and Broadway, wanted to take a higher paying job offer, so he recommended me as his replacement.  I loved photographing in that part of the City—known as the Garment District--but working with photography in the world of advertising became intolerable for me.  I began to feel desperate about finding something else to do.  

Fortunately, Gary Metz--also a friend of mine from RIT days--was in the City at this time.  We spent a lot of time together while he was working as an intern in the Museum of Modern Art’s Photography Department.  He happened to see a poster that had been sent to the Photo Department from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque advertising a Full Graduate Teaching Fellowship in Photography.  Gary encouraged me to apply for it . . . which I did . . . and amazingly, I received the Fellowship!  

Gloria and I got married on August 2, 1969 and we went to New Mexico together.  That was fifty years ago; we just celebrated our Golden wedding anniversary!  

The New Mexico Fellowship was very generous, and fortunately for me it stipulated that I teach two Intro to Photo courses each semester while working towards my MFA degree.  That opportunity to teach was one of the best educational experiences I could have had as a graduate student, for I wanted to become a teacher of photography like many of my mentors.  

 I learned so much teaching those courses!  I was even permitted to teach a Photo II course.  By the time I graduated I felt fully prepared to begin teaching at the college level.  I especially liked teaching the photo course for “non-art majors.”  Those students knew they didn’t know much about art, and in some ways this was to their advantage--it seemed to me.  They were very receptive to what I was teaching, and many of them did surprisingly excellent, original work. 

Ray Metzker had come to teach at the University of New Mexico in my second year there.  He was taking Van Deren Coke’s position (who had gone to Rochester to become the Director of Eastman House upon Beaumont Newhall’s retirement).  As it turned out, though, it was my relationship to Dick Knapp--a new graduate student in photography in my second year at UNM--that would become a more important influence on me at that time.  

Dick’s interest in the ideas of Carl Jung, the world famous Depth Psychologist, inspired me to take a graduate level English course on mythology based on Jungian ideology.  I then became very interested in Jung’s ideas regarding the Creative Process in Medieval Alchemy, and his ideas about Synchronicity, and his fascination with Symbolic Images.  Those ideas became the central themes of my MFA written thesis which was entitled The Symbolic Photograph : A Means to Self-knowledge.  I liked the teacher who taught the myth course, and I asked him to serve on my graduate Thesis Committee.  

Beaumont Newhall was also on my Thesis Committee.  He had come to New Mexico to teach as an Honorary Professor of Art History.  I had taken his History of Photography Class at Eastman House when I was a student at RIT and I thought he could help me with my writing.  I told him what I wanted to write about, and that I was having problems getting started with the writing.  He told me something I’ve never forgotten: he said “Writers always begin in the dark waters of the unknown (the unconscious).  You just begin writing your way up and out of that darkness.”  I have carried this teaching into my Creative Process as a picture-maker. 

*

Immediately after graduating in 1972 with my MFA degree, I was offered my first teaching job at Georgia State University, Atlanta with John McWilliams (who had studied with Harry Callahan).  John and I created an innovative team teaching program, and together with some graduate photo students we founded the photography cooperative gallery named NEXUS which later grew into an active Community Art Center in Atlanta.

 The great photographer & philosopher, Fredrick Sommer, was invited to Atlanta one spring (1973 or 74) to jury a photography exhibition and I was asked to put him up for three days at our house.  Fred and I talked every minute possible about his newly published manifesto: The Poetic Logic of Art and Aesthetics, 1972.  That was for me a never-to-be-forgotten experience!  One the most important things he told me was:  "You only find out in the world what you already have inside you."
*

After three years in Atlanta, Gloria and I wanted to try living closer to her family in Rochester, NY, so I applied for some teaching jobs.  UW-Milwaukee was looking for someone to initiate a new photography program and they invited me to come for an interview.  They decided to offer the position to Charles Traub.  However Charlie decided at the last minute to take another position offered him, and so I was then offered the position.  

 Coming to Milwaukee in 1975 was a very exciting and challenging time for me and my family.  During our first winter in Milwaukee we all got deathly sick.  Indeed, our daughter, Jessica, who was less than a year old at the time, nearly died from a mutated virus.   (See my project The Persephone Series, 1975-76 ) 

In my first two years at UW-Milwaukee I wrote all of the photography courses and curriculums for both the new undergraduate and graduate photography programs;  I set up the new photo lab space in the basement of Mitchell Hall with equipment and supplies; I proposed to the Art Department the idea of Graduate Reviews which was modeled after my experience in New Mexico.  (The proposal was adopted and was made a requirement of the Art Graduate program.)  And I helped initiate, and was one of the founding members of the photography cooperative gallery named PERIHELION which eventually became housed in the Lincoln Center of the Arts on Knapp Street. 

Nonetheless, I was told in no uncertain terms that I would have to start getting exhibitions for my work in commercial galleries or art museums (preferably in NYC or Chicago) if I wanted to get tenured.  Chicago was just down the road, so with fear and resistance I showed my work to David Travis, curator of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago.  David was very receptive to my work and he helped me get my Steve Lacy Series exhibited at the Renaissance Society Galleries at the University of Chicago in 1978, complete with live improvised music at the opening.  (See my blog project The Steve Lacy Series, 1977-78)  

That exhibition generated interest in my work with other venues in Chicago.  And in 1982 David Travis gave me a mid-career retrospective exhibition at the Art Institute that included works from five different projects, highlighting the 1981-82 Lake Series photographs.  By the end of the following year I was awarded tenure by the University and I was represented by two excellent galleries—one in Chicago, and one in Milwaukee—which made it possible for me to have exhibitions of my newest work on a regular basis for the next twenty years.  


Self-effort and Grace
These stories, which tell of meaningful connections with others and fortunate coincidental events, are I believe the fruit of a conjunction of at least two essential ingredients: 1) my own self-effort, motivated by my love of photography and my love of the Creative Process;  and 2) grace.  The two—self-effort and grace—are interdependent.

It is grace, I believe, which binds everything that is meaningful into an ineffable Unitary Reality, a reality greater than the sum of its parts.  Because of my trust in grace I have been able to allow my Creative Process to go where It wants to go, even if the work does not conveniently fit into pre-established categories for marketing or any other purposes.  Out of respect for grace and my Creative Process I have refused to make any compromises merely to accommodate the agendas of others.  


The Symbolic Photograph, A Means to Self-knowledge 
Since graduate school days, my primary intention as a photographer has been to live in alignment with my Creative Process and to make photographs that conjoin visible outer-world realities with their corresponding inner-world Imaginal counterparts.  I have identified this kind of imagery, which unveils and celebrates the Oneness of Being: Symbolic Photographs.

After Gloria and I began practicing Siddha Yoga, in 1987, I gradually became more consciously aware of how grace manifested within my life, and how my photography was but one aspect of a much larger Creative Process.  And with this awareness I began to witness the merging of my yogic practices (especially meditation) with my creative process in photography.  (See my blog project Photography and Yoga.)  


Teaching & Grace
It naturally followed—in its own time, in its own way—that I began observing how grace freely and spontaneously would come into my experience of teaching.  I became aware of how teaching not only inspired my photography, but also how the the grace of my Creative Process in photography inspired my teaching.

Sometimes, when I was teaching in a classroom setting, I would experience a feeling of surrendering to something greater than myself; or I would feel myself spontaneously falling into alignment with what I liked to call the Creative Flow of Life.  In those extraordinary moments I knew intuitively that something was being communicated through me that words could not articulate.

Rumi, the great 13th century Sufi poet-saint, wrote about conversations he had with his Teacher, Shams Tabriz, in which no words were spoken.  He called them Sohbet, "Silent Conversations."   I have often noticed, when I was having one-on-one meetings with students in my office next to the photo lab that as we looked and talked about their photographs, there would be moments of silence palpably charged with the feeling of a different order or dimension of wisdom or meaning or understanding that was being shared between us--through the photographs we were looking at.  Indeed, at times it seemed to me that inside this space of silence, we were seeing the images as if through each others’ eyes.

This kind of Heart-to-Heart Conversation is—I believe—critical to any true student-teacher relationship, a relationship that transcends the purely academic, and that initiates a deeper level of understanding only possible when grace is allowed to enter into those silent spaces between words.

If teaching does not come from the Heart, what good is it, any way? 
*

 The most rewarding thing about teaching photography for me was being able to watch my students gradually awaken to their own inner longings, their own inner Fire, their very own uniquely personal Creative Process.  

Students who have been graced with this experience—which is their birthright--begin to shine with a new sense of self-confidence.  They become visibly happier, and act more fully and spontaneously alive because of the connection they have established with something greater and more meaningful in their lives than the limited conceptions they had initially held of themselves when they first entered the photography program.  

 I knew myself how liberating that experience--those feelings--can be.


A Creative Life After Retirement
I retired from teaching in 2007 and Gloria and I moved to Canandaigua, New York, which is about 20 miles south of Rochester.  Preparing for the move--and then the move itself--was an ever unfolding array of disruptions which kept me from fully engaging with my Creative Process in photography.  I began wondering if I would ever be able to get back into the kind of flowing relationship with picture-making that I had become so accustomed to when I was teaching.  Before I retired, teaching photography had been an integral and inspiring aspect of my Creative Process. 

My son Shaun (who was teaching at RIT computer 3-D animation) suggested I try creating a blog about my photography.  I had been thinking that my days of exhibiting photographs had come to an end, so I decided to give blogging a try.  In November of 2010 I initiated The Departing Landscape (the name of my blog on Blogspot.com).  After a few shaky months of learning the technical procedures, I began creating a digital archive of some of my earlier photography projects, and I began creating new projects specifically for my blog.  And though I am still trying to learn how to write, I have found that the blog texts I write to accompany my photographs has satisfied my instinctual need to share the unfolding array of ideas and experiences associated with my Creative Process.

My blog writings constitute a kind of “silent dialogue” with my own self.  Even after my work on a project feels complete, and I share my photographs and the fruit of my contemplations on my blog with "others," it nonetheless feels to me that these "others" are in some deep way my own self. 

The process of blogging has indeed become for me a deeply satisfying form of contemplation--of my life, my Creative Process, and my life as a Creative Process.  In the past nine years I have been blogging, I have  become more joyfully prolific than ever before in my life.   My blog now contains a complete digital archive of my projects dating back to the late 1960’s and it includes all of my recently completed projects.  ~  I invite you to visit my blog’s Welcome Page which contains all of my projects, contact information, my resume, biographical material, and much more.  Visit:  http://TheDepartingLandscape.blogspot.com


Gratitude
In closing, I want to express my gratitude to the Planning Committee for this year’s SPE Midwest Conference, held here in Milwaukee.  The committee members are:  Jon Horvath, Joseph Mougel, Kevin J. Miyazaki, Lindsay Lochman, Allen Morris and Aryn Kresol.  

It has been a very full and beautifully organized conference, and it has been a great honor for me to have been nominated for this year's “Honored Educator” Award, and to have been invited by the Committee to share with you some of my stories.  Thank you all for being here tonight and for participating in this year’s Conference.

I also want to thank Tyler Friedman, from the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend, for his elegant installation of my Steve Lacy photographs in MoWA’s dedicated Downtown exhibition space in the Saint Kate Arts Hotel Lobby; and I am grateful to John Sobczak, Director of the Alice Wilds gallery in Milwaukee, for the support he has given me and Tyler in getting that exhibition up on the walls.   

 [note: I then invited everyone in the audience (350 had registered for the Conference) to the Gallery Talk scheduled for the next day, Sunday, October 27.  See below for more about the MoWA / DTN exhibition and the Gallery Talks.]  
_______________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________
__________________________________________

The Larger Context
(More stories)

My Honored Educator talk (above) was presented in the UW-Milwaukee Student Union Ballroom on Saturday night, October 26, 2019, during the concluding session of the Conference.  

 Just before I presented my talk Saturday night, Joseph Mougel--one of the Conference Planning Committee members (and teacher of photography in the Art Department at UW-Milwaukee)--made several announcements and thanked everyone for coming to Milwaukee for the Conference.  He then introduced Jon Horvath, another member of the Planning Committee (Jon teaches photography at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design).

 Jon was the first of two presenters who shared their experience of me as a photography teacher at UW-Milwaukee.  Jon was a graduate student in the photography program at UW-Milwaukee when I retired in 2007.   After Jon's talk, he introduced John Sobczak, Director of the Alice Wilds gallery of contemporary art in Milwaukee.  John was one of my earliest Milwaukee students after I arrived in 1975 to create the Photography Sub-Major in the Art Department. 

 After John completed his presentation, Jon Horvath came back to the stage again and announced (to my great surprise) that the Conference's Planning Committee had decided to purchase two of my miniature silver gelatin photographs from the 1999-2001 Garage Series project for the purpose of gifting them, in my honor, to the Museum of Wisconsin Art.  (MoWA)

 Then Jon introduced Tyler Friedman, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the MoWA. He came to the stage to officially accept the two framed photographs, then Tyler proceeded to announce to everyone in attendance that MoWA would be presenting a Retrospective Exhibition of my work in 2021, and that there would be a publication associated with the exhibition, and that there were plans to travel the exhibition.  (Note: a few months later the Covid Epidemic swept through the United States and everything seemed to come to a standstill, including the plans for the Retrospective Exhibition, etc.  In March, 2022, I did hear from the Museum through my gallery director John Sobczak that it intended to go forward with their plans, and that the proposed date for the Exhibition, etc would probably be sometime in 2024.)  

 The evening concluded with a slide talk by Darcy Padilla about her Family Love project.


 Sound / Asleep
A Place to Rest  &  The Steve Lacy Series
MoWA / DTN exhibition in the lobby of the Saint Kate Arts Hotel
  


During the SPE Midwest Conference some of my The Steve Lacy Series photographs were being presented in a two person exhibition in a beautiful gallery in the lobby of the Saint Kate Arts Hotel, officially called MoWA DTN (The Museum of Wisconsin Art, Downtown Location).  The exhibition, entitled Sound / Asleep, curated by WoWA's Tyler Friedman, also includes Tomiko Jones' installation entitled A Place to Rest.  
  




Photos by Tyler Jones for the Alice Wilds Gallery

About the Steve Lacy Exhibition & the two Gallery Talks
Tyler Friedman, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at MoWA opened the Sound / Asleep exhibition in September, 2019 with the idea of it being on display during the time of the SPE Conference because many of the Conference programs were held in the Arts Hotel.  

 Tyler personally selected the eleven Steve Lacy images and designed the installation consisting of three walls, each with a different constellation of framed prints, and a fourth wall upon which was placed a large flat screen monitor playing a video (continuously) of Milwaukee jazz musician Russ Johnson performing trumpet improvisational responses to each constellation of photographs.  He gave brief talks after each improvisation.  Click here to see the video

*

Tyler scheduled two public Gallery Talks at the WoWA/DTN gallery during the SPE Conference: the first was Thursday, October 24, 2019 at 4:30, three hours before the SPE Conference officially began in the Arts Hotel; and the second was on Sunday, October 27, the day after the Conference officially ended.  

 Tyler, Russ and I were present at both Gallery Talk sessions, and in each of those sessions Russ performed a trumpet improvisation to the photographs and their installation.  Russ's two Gallery Talk improvisations were quite different in approach compared to the set documented in the video: he stood next to the video screen and played from that one position looking across the gallery at each of the three walls while he performed.  (An added bonus to this approach was being able to see him perform live next to video images of his earlier performances.  The juxtapositions between the video and live improvisations provided some fascinating visual results.!)

I thoroughly enjoyed our Gallery Talks.  Tyler asked important leading questions, and he contributed comments of his own, and in general he kept the conversation moving along; and Russ and I reacted to each other's ideas and commentaries in lively, engaged ways.  

 During Sunday's Talk, Greg Marcus, owner of the Saint Kate Arts Hotel came in to listen to the concert and our discussion.  At the end of the session he publicly expressed his appreciation and enthusiasm for what had just transpired during our dialogues with each other and Russ's musical dialogue with the photographs.  Mr. Marcus said it was exactly what he had wanted to have happen in the gallery when he initially conceived of idea for the Saint Kate Arts Hotel.
*

I am grateful to John Sobczak and Jon Horvath and Tyler Friedman--and so many other of my Milwaukee friends that have supported me in so many ways in regard to my return to Milwaukee as an exhibiting artist.  See my project The Rising Sun ~ Prelude To An Exhibition, 2018 in which I describe the story of how Jon Horvath and John Sobczak conspired to bring me and my photographs back to Milwaukee for a mini-retrospective exhibition at the Alice Wilds, March 17--April 28, 2018.  Their initiative and that exhibition was the seed from which everything else has since unfolded. 

*

 Besides the two Gallery Talks in the MoWA/DTN Arts Hotel Gallery, and delivering my Honored Educator talk on the concluding evening of the Conference, Gloria and I found time during our visit in Milwaukee to see the film Hilma af Klindt, relax and catch up with many old Milwaukee friends, and I met with John Sobczak to begin discussing the challenging question of how to approach the forthcoming retrospective exhibition in the Museum of Wisconsin Art's new building located in West Bend, Wi.

For Gloria, it was a more challenging time, for she was in quite a lot of pain from her fall in Alaska and she was having dizzy spells from a concussion; but she insisted on coming to Milwaukee to be with me and to spend time with our grandson River and his mom and dad.

Indeed, I had plenty of "play time" with our six-year-old grandson, River!  He is such a treasure, and he ran me ragged with his "throw-Grandpa's-hat-over the-couch" game he spontaneously invented.  We also went to the neighborhood playground to kick a ball around; and we ate pancakes together--which his mom (our daughter Jessica) made for us.  

Our first meeting with River on this trip occurred on Thursday afternoon before my first Gallery Talk.  Gloria and I pulled River out of his last hour of school (he goes to a Milwaukee Public Montessori School) and we took him to Babe's for an ice cream cone! (River chose chocolate ice cream, covered with chocolate sprinkles, plus a small cup of M&Ms on the side!) 

An extra special treat for me was seeing River and his Mom and his Dad, Paul come to Sunday's Gallery Talk.  When they entered the gallery River handed me some paintings he had made, as a way of saying "Congratulations Grandpa."  When the Talk began many of us assumed that River would get restless and want to run around the Hotel.  Jessica kept checking with River to see if he wanted to get up and leave, but River insisted on staying.  He sat and listened, and he seemed especially fascinated by Russ's trumpet improvisations.  Russ, in turn, responded musically to River's presence!
                                ___________________________________________________________________                     
                                                                              
     River, "The Forest"                                          Claire,  (Untitled, Self Portrait?)                     
                                                           
It was a wonderful visit to Milwaukee, but we are back home, now, in Canandaigua, NY.  Gloria and I have taped the pictures River gave us up on our wall--next to other paintings that our granddaughter, Claire (4 1/2 years of age) had given us earlier.  Claire and her mom, Hao and her dad, Shaun (our son)--who live just 15 miles from us near Rochester-- will be with us for Thanksgiving Dinner.

There is so much I have to be grateful for . . . and Gloria and I are looking forward to Christmas time when Claire and River will have a chance to play together here in New York State (with Grandpa too, of course!).


________________________________________________________
___________________________________________

Addendum 
May 2024 

Of course, just a few months later, when the Pandemic became a living nightmare for so many people around the world, including the USA, the plans for my 2021 exhibition, etc. by the Museum of Wisconsin Art simply faded into the background, and has never been realized as I write this note in late May, 2024.  I never received an official statement from the Museum that the project was off or simply in a holding pattern, so I don't know if this event will ever take place at all, or in my lifetime.  I keep this recent teaching by Gurumayi Chidvilasanda in mind as I write this Addendum:

Gurumayi said (my paraphrasing):    
 
We should set aside time to celebrate the splendor of 
our efforts and admire the mystical workings of
      grace & the hand of destiny in our endeavors.     


       *
________________________________________________________
___________________________________________
   


   This project was announced on my blog's
    Welcome Page on November 28,  2019  
     Thanksgiving Day
 Addendum added Late May, 2024 



 RELATED Links:

https://wisconsinart.org/exhibitions/sound-asleep.aspx 

https://vimeo.com/360691657  Russ Johnson's improvisation video  

https://www.spenational.org/conferences/communities-collaborations-and-collectives

RELATED Blog Project links:

 The Rising Sun ~ Prelude To An Exhibition, March 2018

 Snow Photographs ~ Homage To Harry Callahan and All My Teachers, April 2018

 Postlude to an Exhibition ~ Homage to Minor White, A Stieglitz & V Silvestrov, 6-2019

Photography and Yoga 2015

Visit the Welcome Page to my Departing Landscape photography blog which includes the complete listing of my online photography projects dating back to the 1960's, my resume, contact information, and much much more. 










at