Ten October Leaflets and a Routine of Understanding: the BLM, Juniper, Grasslands, Fire Suppression, the Artifice of Art, the Plausibility of Scale, Paper Frames, and an Ever Present Center

Ten October Leaflets
paper, pastel, acrylic, fabric, glass and wood
5 3/4 x 44 1 7/8 inches

In the habit of collecting autumn leaves, one day I selected the smallest specimens I could find.  Seeing comes from being in front of things over and over again.  In the routine the unexpected may reveal itself.  An oak leaf calls to mind shape and size, but that’s a narrow spectrum when compared with a grove full of oak leaves.  Much of my knowledge comes from sights so familiar that they finally grab my attention.  That may be why we can easily be fooled.  It takes some kind of recognition to realize that the parameters of an argument may not support its position.

My Brother Steve Standing by a 20 Year Old Juniper

This country has a lot of juniper.  An argument states that much of the West was more open than it currently is; juniper invaded grassy lands due to fire suppression.  It is unlikely that anywhere there are now vast stands of juniper, that 50 to 100 years ago those areas were mostly open.  I live where I can watch them grow, and know the timeline needed to go from seedling to tree simply doesn’t fit the scenario.  A 20 year old tree in a field that is regularly watered is not much bigger than a man.  Junipers grow slowly and are among the last trees to reseed after fire.  A fire on a nearby ridge 17 years ago is still waiting for junipers to show while everything else has taken off.  The idea that juniper once burned with a regularity that mirrors that of other kinds of forests isn’t supported by the trees.  Large trees mean there hasn’t been any fire in quite a while.  Past grasslands described on Bureau of Land Management signs seem to be a ranching theme without a bias for science.   

Ten October Leaflets (left end detail)

The leaves selected are not the leaves I framed.  As a matter of fact, I didn’t frame any leaves at all.  Drawn to scale, the leaflets stage a way to plausibility.  In landscape painting, that situation never arises.  No matter how accurately a ridgeline is rendered, it is never mistaken for the real thing because of scale.  Although art is always a lie, it is not very good at deception.  Basic truth gives it away.  We enjoy the con, failing to realize that brushstrokes are nothing but marks and abstraction is considered another thing altogether.  Many need to see things in things never realizing that everything is essentially abstract.  The leaves are not leaves.  Paper framed abstractions stand in for fallen leaves.  Here the plausibility of scale buys paper a shelf life of deception.

Ten October Leaflets (center detail)

I liked the word leaflet; it applies to the tiny side of leaves and pages of information.  The leaflets can also be thought of as propaganda for the month of October.  Not only are the leaves misleading, the frames are also paper.  The shelf is covered in handmade book coverings identifying the individual leaves by number.  Within the simplicity of a specimen box, the centered designation of a leaf is the only arrangement that makes any sense.  Framing compositionally makes it seem like we can achieve a vision that is not centered.  However, there is no way of denying the center; every shift in sight is a new center.  We only perceive asymmetry because what we see is based on conditioning.  The only way to center or not center a road or the edge of a building is by not seeing the rest of the scenery.  Vision does not care where it is positioned; it always sees what is in front of it.  Visual significance is just a manifestation of a hierarchy of interests that have nothing to do with sight.

Ten October Leaflets (right end detail)

Clear Lake, Utah: Landscape Painting by Lloyd Brown Captures Desert Wetlands



Details: Clear Lake, Millard County, Utah (The Loneliest Road in America)
oil on canvas
7 x 57 1/8 inches





The images for this painting came from a drive my brother Steve and his family and I took to Clear Lake.  Leaving town we hit a squall.  The early summer afternoons were filled with frequent thunderstorms.  It was difficult to tell if the shafts were veils of rain or curtains of dust.  This was new.  Although it was desert to the west for as far as the eye could see, dust squalls were limited to gusty southerly breezes that abruptly switched course to a sandblasting kind of cold just ahead of snow.  Not all snowstorms precipitated dust, but some swept in with a choking grey just ahead of whiteout.

            The current dust comes from fire or a series of fires that burned more than 360,000 acres of trees, shrubbery and grasslands to the southwest of town the summer of 2007.  We were away at a family reunion in northern Utah.  The news was short on information; we couldn’t tell where the fire was burning.  The freeway was closed; we knew that much, but because so many TV reporters are just pretty faces, they didn’t really know where they were.  The largest fire in Utah’s history was but an abstract distraction between commercial breaks.  When we got home, smoke exposed flames burned away on the horizon for several nights.  When the blaze was close to comatose, the roads we thought we knew turned to delicate ash.  Firefighting teams and machinery beat chalky ruts to alkali power.  As we drove through dusty brush, an unspoken dread of getting stuck was mentioned.  A driver never cares to hear those tones of concern turn to scolding satisfaction when a dreaded event happens.  The road improved.  Blackness came into view and silenced what could have been a scorn of superiority.    



            The fire explains the vast shafts of dust and veiled rain.  It is hard to tell which will prevail until the first droplets hit the skin so cold, you recoil.  It’s not like that everywhere.  Rain is not always met with darting alarm.  Pelts are only pelts because the cold makes it so.  Babies are not baptized in ice water for a reason.  I didn’t know that until I left the Basin and Range region of the United States.  A downpour can be like standing in a shower.  Although ducking for cover is common practice, in many places it is just about staying dry.

 





            As we walked around the lake, clouds were very much a part of the scenery.  Atmospheric conditions of filtered light and rain, and the small scale of the painting obscure the mountainous terrain of the horizons.   It could be almost anywhere.  Water is the thing we see and I am reminded of being out in a boat around Port Aransas.  The difference is mainly scale.  Shallows and reeds, sky high clouds cast in sedimentary decay, mercury colored mud languidly underscores the distillation of a breeze, an unbroken transparency dancing in ripple and wave across the water.  With a little imagination, the scene could be anywhere along the Texas coastline.  The difference is one of confinement.  Mountains surround the lake in a sea of sage.