New Jersey Blues

New Jersey: The Movie

2010-09-25T06:47:00.001-07:00

Tonight we are hosting a special event at the Artists' Gallery. Steve Chernoski, Writer/Director of the award winning New Jersey: The Movie will be on hand for a free screening. It's a fun documentary about New Jersey and the dividing line between north and south Jersey, which happens to be right around the Lambertville area. While this has little to do with fine art paintings and photos, it does fit in with our desire to explore some of the lesser known aspects of New Jersey in New Jersey Blues.

Now that the exhibit has been up for a few weeks, we've gotten a lot of great feedback from visitors. Many are familiar with the places depicted, and if not they are curious to learn more about them. Many of Rich's pieces look like very typical New Jersey scences, although you might not notice them so much as you travel throughout the state. By coincidence, many of the photos I selected are of things you might not think you'd find in New Jersey. I really like the mix of the two together. I'm glad we had the chance to put this exhibit up in our new space, the lighting and layout are a vast improvement.

I just finished a 40-page book entitled Lambertville, Photo Essay of a New Jersey River Town, comprised of images I've taken around Lambertville in the last few years, some of which are also in the exhibit. It's on display and available for purchase at the gallery for $45, and copies can also be ordered from me directly at the same price.

Rich and I will be at the gallery next weekend, it's your last chance to stop by and see the exhibit. Rich will be doing some painting, check for updates on the exact day and time.

The Days Grow Short When We Reach September

2010-09-16T20:06:00.000-07:00

The Photographer and The Painter outside the Gallery on Opening Night...

Posted by Rich- When a gallery show is finally hung, it is amazing how brief the time seems where the work is actually on display all together. It seems especially short when I consider how long John and I have been working on developing the exhibition concept, and working on our individual contributions.

The reaction to the work on display seems to be mostly positive, although I found the attendance at the opening reception itself to be disappointing. Actually, “disappointing” would be an understatement. There were a few periods during the reception on Saturday night when the gallery felt like a diorama before the mannequins are installed. I arrived over an hour late, and John assures me that between 5 and 6 PM the joint was jumping, but attendance was pretty sparse after that. We did have well over a hundred visitors to the gallery that day, however, and both John and I sold work ( the little paintings of the Lambertville-New Hope Bridge went quick! Thinking I might do some more…)

Personally, I feel more at ease when there aren’t a lot of people milling around, and I have never felt comfortable being in the spotlight; the group show openings are much more enjoyable to me, or attending the opening receptions of the other members of the gallery. One of the reasons: I don’t think I am ever 100% satisfied with my work on display. I often want to keep working on it, and have actually taken work down off the wall during the week and spruced it up before the gallery re-opens on the weekend.

Like the previous exhibitions I’ve done at the Artists’ Gallery, I was working right up until the last minute to get the body of work completed on time for the show. This time though, it was really the very last minute, and I hesitated at inviting a lot of people to something I wasn’t positive was going to be at all worth looking at.

Fortunately, John had used his photo of Hot Dog Johnny’s roadside stand in Northwest New Jersey as a publicity piece, and the work struck a nostalgic chord in a good number of patrons who showed up to see it. I had considered doing a watercolor of the same place, but I’m glad I didn’t spend any time working on one; John’s photo of the place is so good, I think any painting would pale by comparison. As a matter of fact, after seeing the publicity for the exhibition, a nephew of the original owner of Hot Dog Johnny’s came in to look at John’s photo as well.

The concept for this exhibition will not end when we take the work down on October 4th; There are still a great many places in New jersey I want to visit and see what I can find to create paintings from. The Bendix Diner, of course, is still on my list, and I’d also like to see where Les Paul lived in Mahwah.

The time for the actual exhibition will end the first weekend of October, but I will be creating a lot more work based on New Jersey and hopefully have another exhibition of the New Jersey Blues with John in the future. One thing became evident as we worked on this show: the State of New Jersey is a lot bigger than it seems, and underneath the layers of four lane expressways, strip malls, and jug-handle left turns, it is also much more interesting than it appears.

Hang Time

2010-09-10T08:01:00.000-07:00

The "Big Letter" promo card for the exhibition.

Posted by Rich- Long days and nights in the studio the past two weeks became the norm as I got closer to the show and worked to finish the artwork. Finishing the painting is one thing; getting the work matted, framed, labeled, and generally cleaned up enough for presentation and hopefully a sale is another chore altogether, and one I am not particularly fond of.

As much as one of my previous blog posts seemed to be a complaint about the creative process I go through to complete each piece, it really isn’t all stressful tedium. Painting and drawing is really quite relaxing, and when I’m not doing any of either I find myself thinking about it, and what I would like to paint or draw when I finish whatever I have in my studio at present. To me, the nicest thing about finishing a painting is not displaying it, but being able to start another one that hopefully will come out better. If I could afford it, I’d much rather pay some one else to do all my framing and hanging while I just made more work in my studio.

I was able to finish eleven pieces for this exhibition. I had started a twelfth, a large watercolor of the Crossroads Diner. That particular one will have to wait, however, as I felt I could not give it the attention it deserves; it has the potential to be a very nice piece, and I really want to do a good job rendering the stainless steel and glass exterior. I was able to get it about a quarter of the way finished when I decided to concentrate on other compositions for the New Jersey Blues exhibition.

Besides the Crossroads Diner, other works in progress – “progress” meaning they are either started with watercolor, drawn in pencil on unstretched watercolor paper, or consist of a drawing transferred to a stretched canvas- include a 1951 Ford, front end view (I always liked the 1951’s , and I painted a similar one in acrylics a few years ago and sold it right away); a triptych of truss bridges spanning the New Jersey Transit rail line to Manhattan ( see the bridge post earlier on for details on my fascination with bridges of this type); two large canvases of railroad subjects, a tank car and a coal car, taken from photos snapped on a sunny winter day almost 2 years ago ( I like trains- not enough to have a large model train layout in my basement, but enough to buy and enjoy magazines like The Railroad Press); 2 separate paintings of old John Deere tractors ( I like tractors, too. I’d really like to try driving one. Unfortunately, there haven’t been many opportunities to try one out…no one offers a course on tractor driving) and a painting of an old Mack truck, a Model B. ( I had a metal toy of a Mack B Model when I was very small. The toy has long since disappeared, but the affection for the truck lives on; I’ve painted Model B’s several times over the years…)

A Mack "B" Model truck....

Frames and mat boards have been purchased, and a night devoted to measuring, cutting, glass cleaning, and labeling the works for exhibition took place. John and I also spent an evening hanging the work in the gallery, with John graciously agreeing to hang work the night before the gallery opens for business on Friday morning; I can always use every available minute, and then some, to get this work completed. I stayed until midnight or so after we got done hanging work to apply more paint to the Zega Farm watercolor.

This needed a lot more work...come by the exhibition to see how it looks finished, although unsigned.

John and I have exhibited work together before, and set a precedent with one of our shows by mingling the photography and paintings together in the exhibition space. Prior to this, the usual practice for the 2 artists exhibiting that month was to display on opposite sides of the gallery, splitting the space evenly. I like combining the work, since John and I both focused on the same subject, and since I feel like my eleven paintings- 3 of which are only 8 x 6 inches- do not take up much space on a wall when they are displayed by themselves, and I don’t want one side of the gallery space to appear lonely. Especially my side…

After we arranged all the pieces, it looks like we had more than enough work to fill the walls, with John's larger photographs looking particularly good.As a matter of fact, the entire gallery looks great. Unfortunately, I’m still not 100% satisfied with all the work I completed…sometimes I hesitate to sign my work if I feel like it's not completely finished, and I want to go back and add more to it.

We also created an announcement postcard that reflects the theme of the exhibition, a “big letter” design reminiscent of the postcards purchased as souvenirs or sent from resort locations like Atlantic City in the middle of the last century.

It has been the practice for members of our gallery to place art in the front window of the gallery, hoping to entice pedestrians on Bridge Street in Lambertville to come in and look at the current exhibit. John and I chose to have a large ( 44 inches wide) version of our big letter post card placed on an easel- hopefully the nostalgic appeal of the card will attract patrons in. Stop by Lambertville and see for yourself if it works!

The BIGGER "Big Letter" postcard in the gallery window...

artist in picture for scale comparison only!

The Opening Reception for the exhibition is Saturday, September 11th at 5 PM- I did not tell many people about it, mostly because I was buried in work and worried that I wouldn’t have many pieces finished in time…however, the Artist’s Gallery has a pretty good publicity mechanism in place, and John has been great at getting notices out to people, so maybe the Opening will be well attended.

…I’m already thinking about my next exhibition.

Got this one finished,and signed! It looks a lot better than this in progress piece.

The Worst Thing I Ever Did...

2010-09-07T20:14:00.000-07:00

Posted by Rich- Every time I start a new painting or illustration assignment, it always goes through a stage where it looks like it is spinning out of control and I should just start over. I make myself stick to it, and I usually am able to bring it in for a controlled landing, although there are ALWAYS portions of a piece I wish I had done better.
The stages of the painting usually go like this:
Inspiration…Sketching…Transferring sketch …line painting, monochromatic line and under painting…
then self doubt, wondering why I chose this particular subject matter, and trying to convince myself that this painting is worth pursuing despite the fact that it looks like a complete train wreck at this point.

The train wreck stage occurs during the actual application of the color media itself to the surface . This stage usually includes various amounts of sweating, tedium, second guessing, mixing and remixing colors. Until I am about three-quarters of the way to the finished art, each painting I work on has an equal opportunity to win the title of The Worst Painting I Ever Did. All of the paintings in this exhibition looked at one point like absolute disasters in the making while I blocked in colors and worked on value transitions. I continually remind myself, several times, of what I tell my students:
“Everything I paint looks like the worst thing I ever did, halfway
through…”

Some of my progress pictures posted here will attest to that.

The watercolors are probably the pieces that give me the willies earliest on—they can really look like a mess during the first stages. Any mistakes on the acrylic paintings can be painted over pretty quickly, but the watercolors require letting the white of the paper illuminate the pigment, so I have to work with a layering process…

A

Painting of the 7-11 in West Cape May, at the very beginning stage, and halfway through....it was scary.

I think I enjoy the watercolors the most though, despite the willies they give me. Number one reason: they’re fast, and I can stop working on a painting and pick it up a few hours or days later with no remixing of paints. Number two, they are portable; given my busy schedule, I can transport a watercolor with me easily and get a few colors added in between teaching classes or waiting for the train. I just need a bottle of water and a place to sit. I’ve worked on paintings in airport terminals, Burger Kings, mall food courts, and waiting for new tires to be installed on my truck at the garage where I get it serviced. I’ve even done some watercolor work while commuting on the train – you just have to time the bumps and bounces and make sure you work on an area of the painting that doesn’t require exacting detail.

Another Cape May piece; these clouds were great to look at, tough to paint...

Looks like I will be trying to squeeze in some more watercolor work where ever I can this week; It’s Tuesday, and the exhibition needs to have work hanging in place by 11 AM Friday. If I get a seat on the train with enough room, I think I can finish all the pieces by then.

A River Runs By It

2010-08-12T05:42:00.000-07:00

Posted by Rich- Living a few miles from the Delaware River, you get used to having to use a bridge to get from New Jersey to Pennsylvania and back again. Some of these bridges are more mundane than others, with a four lane highway transversing the river so smoothly you barley realize you are on a bridge, while others that look so narrow and spindly you wonder if it will be able to hold up the weight of the cars driving across it.

As a kid growing up in Utica, NY, we lived adjacent to the New York State Barge Canal and almost always had to cross over it whenever we wanted to go someplace. Most of the bridges we drove over then seemed to be of the same vintage and design as the three bridges I now use to cross over the Delaware, but none had any of the charm; as a matter of fact, they were more of the spindly variety and looked downright scary as they were perched high over the canal to allow boats passing underneath ample clearance.
A surviving truss bridge over the New York State Barge Canal...

When my father would drive our station wagon up the incline and onto the steel deck of the bridge, it was always a crapshoot whether or not another vehicle would be driving up the opposite incline and also trying to cross the bridge as well. The bridge was just barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other; forget it if a truck was coming—either you had to back up, or they did. A game of slow-motion chicken played out high over the Barge Canal was not my idea of a pleasant ride to visit Grandama.

Some of my trepidation about crossing bridges stem from the news coverage of the 1967 Silver Bridge collapse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Bridge) over the Ohio River, and this 1940 motion picture of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge , also known as “Gallopin’ Gertie”(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-zczJXSxnw) in Washington State. These images, coupled with the somewhat dark, ominous appearances of the old truss bridges we regularly crossed, contributed to my apprehension about driving over them. The quicker we got safely to the other side, the better.

The bridge between New Hope, PA and Lambertville, NJ is more of a “tourist” bridge, one you want to take your time driving and walking over. It has a broad cantilevered walkway on one side to accommodate pedestrians and allow for pictures to be taken without impeding the progress of others crossing between the two states. The bridge gets a good amount of automobile traffic, but despite the loudness of the occasional motorcycle group crossing the bridge, it’s relatively quiet; Trucks and busses are prohibited from using this bridge, and required to cross the river on the Route 202 New Hope-Lambertville Toll Bridge about a mile or so north . This section of Route 202 was opened in 1971 as a bypass for New Hope/Lambertville, taking all the trucks and thru traffic over one of those hardly-know-you’re-on–a-bridge four lane overpasses over the river.

The New Hope/Lambertville Bridge

The New Hope/Lambertville bridge itself is actually is a sturdy steel deck, steel truss structure made up of 6 individual bridges connected to each other at stone pilings spaced evenly across the Delaware. Constructed in 1904, the engineers and planners had the foresight to make the bridge wide enough to accommodate two mid-20th century sized vehicles passing each other comfortably on the span.

It’s an aesthetically pleasing structure, and I enjoy looking at the graceful order of engineering that makes up this bridge; what I don’t enjoy is driving over it from New Jersey into Pennsylvania and being dumped into the traffic and pedestrian crush of New Hope. On a Saturday or Sunday it can take a few turns of the traffic light to make a left hand turn onto the main street, with businesses on those corners attracting waves of individuals intent on ignoring the traffic lights patronizing those businesses. The corner hosts both a Dunkin’ Donuts and a Starbucks- I can empathize with the pedestrians crossing against the light signal and being focused on making donut and coffee purchases.

To truly enjoy this bridge at it’s fullest, I recommend driving from New Hope into Lambertville, then parking and walking back over the bridge to get your tall latte and jelly donut, if so desired. Lambertville can be a busy area as well, especially as you get closer to the bridge to New Hope, but there is generally a more relaxed, less touristy feeling there. And more places to park, as well.

Two other bridges I drive over frequently to get across the Delaware River and into New Jersey include the Washington Crossing Bridge and the Calhoun Street Bridge. Both structures are each over 100 years old, with the Calhoun Street Bridge being constructed in 1884.

The Washington Crossing Bridge... just hope a Nissan Armada SUV isn't approaching from the opposite direction...

The Washington Crossing Bridge has a more utilitarian feeling than the ornate Calhoun Street Bridge, and also feels narrower when driving over it. As a matter of fact, you get the feeling that your individual car can barely fit between the trusses, let alone pass another vehicle without scraping each others sides. Whenever I drive over it, I fold the driver’s side mirror of my pick up truck flat against the door, and breathe easier when I reach the other side without having to squeeze by a gargantuan SUV heading in the opposite direction.

The Calhoun Street Bridge...it's sturdier than it looks!

The Calhoun Street Bridge was originally intended to be a temporary structure, and connects Morrisville, PA with Trenton, NJ. It appears to get much more traffic than the Washington Crossing Bridge, especially during morning and afternoon rush hours. It was once part of Rt. 30, also known as The Lincoln Highway, until 1920, when Rt 30 was moved to the larger Lower Trenton Bridge. This bridge is more popularly known as the “Trenton Makes” bridge.

To me, the most intriguing thing about these three bridges are the Bridgekeeper structures that sit at either end of the spans, and the Bridgekeepers themselves. At different times driving over these structures, I have seen the Bridgekeepers at work, stopping larger than permitted trucks from crossing, walking onto the bridge and motioning the trucks that successfully snuck on from one side to pull over and face the music on the other, and even doing simple maintenance tasks like trimming the hedge and sweeping the sidewalk ramp to the pedestrian walkway.

Being a Bridgekeeper honestly looks like a neat job, and the although the small structures they watch the bridge from vary in appearance, they all look cozy and comfortable, especially the cottage like structures at either end of the New Hope/Lambertville Bridge.

Posted are some shots of some small New Hope/Lambertville Bridge paintings, in progress. I took two of the pictures as my wife Laurie and I waited for the Friday Night Fireworks to begin on the Delaware between New Hope and Lambertville. I’m not an expert at what makes a quality fireworks display, but I think this weekly event is excellent—well attended, well behaved crowds and spectacular pyrotechnics over the river. The third painting with the different angle is based on a picture I snapped last winter while taking a break from gallery sitting at the Artists’ Gallery.

Each painting is acrylic on panel, and smaller than I usually work, only 8 x 6 inches. Working on these smaller paintings has interested me in completing larger, more detailed watercolors of the same subjects in the future. But for now, these three images are high on the to-do list.

When you come see the exhibition in September, you can see the finished pieces in person.

Let's Put on a Show!

2010-07-26T20:11:00.000-07:00

It’s fascinating to watch Rich develop the paintings he has posted here. I'm always asking Rich “How did you do that?” and seeing the paintings in various stages gives some idea of the techniques he used and the effort put forth.

As I look forward to the September show, I have different challenges as a photographer. Rich is looking to finish the works and increase the number of completed paintings. I’m largely done shooting, and am now in the post-capture phase. I need to pare down what I’ve shot to create the best possible exhibit.

This is a real struggle for me. I only want to present my best work, but often a series of photos tells a more complete story. There is a tyranny of vision if I only choose one or two images – that is all people get to see, and I can rarely tell a whole story with one or two images. That is why I’ve grown to really love this blog, as I can show more images and provide more information than I can at the gallery.

This exhibit is not a documentary, but rather a collection of fine art images around a theme. I do not therefore feel obligated to capture every interesting roadside attraction in New Jersey. I do feel obligated, however, to leave viewers with an overall impression of the some of the unusual and interesting things that make this state so unique.

When I mount an exhibition like this around a theme, I gather all the possible images on the computer to see how things look together. Sometimes I layout the images on a virtual wall, sometimes not. Last year Rich and I interspersed our work and it made for some very interesting juxtapositions. We will likely try this again this year.

Things get interesting when I have the images gathered and I see patterns and omissions. It’s not until this point that I get a sense of what the exhibit will really feel like. I may find, for example, that I have a lot of photos of buildings. Are they interesting enough? Too similar? Is it exhibit about the building or how it fits in the landscape? Are there people interacting with the building? Typically, when I’m shooting at a location, I’ve got close-ups, long shots, abstractions, and photos with people. The images I choose to tell a story determine what people feel.

I’m convinced the subject of the work is more important in photography than other mediums. It doesn’t matter so much if VanGogh paints a night sky or sunflower. Its how he paints it that people react to. But typically a photo of a night sky or a photo of a sunflower will first remind viewers of a night they spent outside or a sunflower in their grandmother’s garden before they react to the artistry. All photos start with light bouncing off a real object.

So, I believe the subject is important. And no subject is more fascinating than people. Photos of yourself are the most fascinating, followed by photos of those you know and then animals. Photos of people are so expected, in fact, that I find photo exhibits without a single person or even an animal to be rather stark, cold, and removed, although this is sometimes exactly the point.

Once I’ve settled on the images to include, I start to think about the final presentation. I don’t do a lot of after-capture manipulation, but I begin to think about how to crop the individual photos and whether I want them to be in black and white or color. And what kind of black and white and color? Bold colors, muted colors, sepia toned, stark black and white, or black and white with softer gray tones are all options. I usually have a very clear idea when I shoot, but sometimes change my mind when I look at a series of images later. It’s more about setting a mood or telling a story than it is about right or wrong.

I’m already struggling with one aspect of this exhibition, and that is the sense of time. I’ve got images that aren’t exactly timeless, but look like they could have been taken yesterday or fifty years ago. I’m trying to decide whether it’s more interesting to emphasize this by giving the images a timeless quality, or whether it’s more interesting to make them look modern and hope people see “that the more things change the more they stay the same”.

Finally, the subject of scale comes into play. I’m always amazed how some images just seem to look right or wrong at certain sizes. Sometimes the size is dictated by technical factors like sharpness or details in the shadows. Usually, however, I print to the size that has the kind of impact I'm looking for.

Progress on a Few Pieces

2010-07-21T12:32:00.000-07:00

Posted by Rich- Crunch time is quickly approaching as I work on pieces for the New Jersey Blues Show. I have everything at least drawn out on paper or board now, and have been concentrating on the pieces for the triptych. Here is what the individual parts of the triptych look like now; I’ll post more as pictures as I get more accomplished…

I usually work in watercolor on paper, but I thought it would be nice to render this particular subject in acrylics on board. I've been working on them while I teach a summer course on animation, and acrylics dry fast and are durable enough to carry back and forth on the train to Philadelphia. I like shooting the progress pictures and seeing the changes that take place; sometimes it's kind of shocking to see how they look when I've just started to how they appear now, even just halfway finished.

-

Decisions, Decisions…

2010-07-08T18:17:00.000-07:00

Posted by Rich-It’s been about 6 months since I began driving around New Jersey, taking reference photos, and working on sketches for the New Jersey Blues exhibition; now it’s time to get some of the artwork finished.

It is always hard to decide exactly which images I want to pour my blood, sweat, and tears into… and the past few days it has been mostly sweat, with the temperature getting close to 100 degrees and no rain for a few weeks…

I have to make some hard decisions, stop visiting locales in The Garden State, and work in my studio ( near the air conditioner!) . The biggest problem is making a commitment to an image that I want to finish without getting distracted by other subjects, so a self-placed moratorium on getting new pictures is now in effect.

I hope I will not get “inspired” by an entirely new subject between now and September 1st, so I am leaving my camera at home and keeping my short attention span focused on what I have in my studio.

From my various reference pictures, I have it narrowed down to about 15 images I hope to get finished. The pieces I am working on for the exhibition are mostly watercolors, with many of the images already penciled faintly onto watercolor paper, waiting to be stretched. I am also working on a triptych using acrylics on board.

I like working with acrylics because they dry fast. The quick drying time of the medium irritates many artists who prefer the slower drying of oil paints, but the speedy drying time allows for portability of the work and lessens the chance that I will rest my elbow on a still-wet oil painting while working on it. I am teaching classes while working on these pieces, and often carry them back and forth on the train to Philadelphia with me; I think my fellow passengers may appreciate the fact that they also won’t risk resting their elbows on a slow drying oil painting as well.

The three works shown are the starts of the “Trenton Triptych” based on photos I took over time while riding the New Jersey Transit line to New York City. I am fascinated not only by the large structures that remain as a vestige of industry in the Rustbelt of the Northeast, but also by the houses and neighborhoods that surround them. I think of what it must have been like to grow up in a house that was one or two blocks away from a working factory; from what I have seen of the remains of these old neighborhoods, it appears that there were often several factories and industrial sites interspersed among the residential houses. I also wonder what it must be like presently living with a large, decaying structure like this on your street, or just a few blocks away. Is there a hope that it will someday soon be demolished, or perhaps revived into a working factory once again? Perhaps these buildings remain standing and await gentrification and repurposing in the future. It wasn’t too long ago when you could not imagine parts of New York City as safe residential and shopping areas, but some of those same sections are now quite chic and prohibitively expensive to live in. Hopefully, some of these old factory buildings will survive long enough to see another life as well.

Actually got the sky painted in on this one...

Lost and Found

2010-07-08T18:08:00.001-07:00

In South Jersey, I came across a complex of warehouses that had some unusual writing on them. They were covered in folksy sayings like "A friend is one who comes to you when all others leave" and "Some people give and forgive others get and forget" Another building says "May you live all the days of your life" and "The door to the human heart can only be opened from the inside" One of my favorites is "A friend is one who knows all about you and still likes you".

I have no idea what they are doing here. We've been writing on our living spaces since we were cavemen, and it still serves the same purpose - to share what we think is important, and to convince others that they should consider it important too. In a time when we are bombarded with advertising messages, it seemed pretty wonderful to me that someone decided to put these on the side of their buildings.

This graffiti is worn and faded, but it was clearly applied with care and a sense of design. There is a Pennsylvania German feel to the lettering, in a kind of fraktur script. There is a recurring star design that serves as a visual anchor.

To me, this is no different than any spray painted graffiti one sees alongside the highway or railway. They are both attempts to change how people look at the world, and a scream that says "I was here, and this is the way I think the world should be" They are very much a protest against the status quo. A lot of thought went into the message and the execution.

NJ: Where the Buffalo Roam

2010-07-01T19:45:00.001-07:00

Last weekend I witnessed the buffalo herds crossing the mighty plains of Flemington. Readington River Buffalo Company has a small herd and sells buffalo meat here throughout the year. You can also get it at restaurants around the state.

The buffalo (or bison, if you prefer) are actually a bit skittish and ran away from me. I didn't think they were paying much attention once they were a safe distance away. But looking at the photos, I could see that most of them were keeping an eye on me.

A Big Black Dog To Bite Your Behind

2010-06-30T19:27:00.000-07:00

…if they ever find out you’re not one of their kind.”
Or so go the lyrics of the tune “Friday Night at the Drive In Bingo” by Jens Lekmen. I heard the song on a compilation CD given to me by Jim Lindsay, a writer (author of the novel Brutal Music, available through Amazon .com) and an old friend from Syracuse who now lives in Boston. I depend on his musical knowledge to keep me up to date with what’s hip.

When you are driving around out looking for things to paint pictures of, you can be regarded suspiciously by the people who may end up as subjects in your next masterpiece. (See the older post “Nearly Night In Titusville” on this very blog) Some may take notice of you, suspecting potential criminal activity, but some perceive you as an even worse threat: The person with the camera and notebook is really a municipal codes enforcer or tax assessor, gathering evidence that will inevitably result in the property owner having to spend more cash.

As a remedy for this intrusion, some home and property owners keep a big barking dog on hand to alert them of the alleged perpetrator/tax assessor (what’s the difference, really?) and keep the visitor at bay and off the property. Gathering reference for photos, I’ve found myself being barked at by both man and beast, but sometimes I welcome the dogs alerting the homeowner to my presence. It gives me an opportunity to meet the owner, explain my purpose and hopefully get some information and reference images that aren’t just blurry pictures of a big dog running towards me from a house.

This was the opportunity a few weeks ago when I stopped on a sunny afternoon to take some photos of an absolutely beautiful farm. I kept my distance and remained on the road that ran along the front of the property, and did not see a soul around. It was a sunny spring afternoon with a sky full cumulus clouds against a bright blue sky, and I really wanted to get better pictures of the barn and buildings further up the hill, but the place appeared deserted…

Gee, it IS a nice view from up here...

I walked back and forth taking more pix, hoping someone would come to the front door of the farmhouse and inquire as to what I was doing. I suppose I could have just knocked on the door, but the lyrics from the song kept playing in my head…
“I want the people in the country to be open and kind
but most times I've met those with a narrow mind
with a big black dog to bite your behind
if they ever find out you're not one of their kind”
...sure enough, a large black Labrador retriever behind the farm house noticed me on the road, and came barking and running towards me, raising quite a racket; eventually the owner came outside to investigate what exactly his dog was barking at.

Just the break I was waiting for.

Fortunately, the owner of this farm turned out to be quite the opposite of the song lyrics. A very gracious, older, white-haired gentleman named Mr. Tony Zega (“Zega. It’s a Greek name”, he explained to me) was the dog’s owner, and he told me he had lived on this farm since 1939. I explained to him that I was an artist and I hoped to get some pictures of his place for a painting. His reaction was “Oh, yeah, artists are always coming around here painting this place. Walk up the driveway to the barn, turn right and go halfway up the field, that’s the best spot to paint from”. His reaction to my explanation was so casual, it was actually rather amusing. I thought if I followed his directions that afternoon and ventured up to the spot he pointed out, I might find a couple dozen other artists with French easels all busily painting away, all painting the same subject.

Mr. Zega told me over the years he had lived there, his farm had been painted hundreds of times by Bucks County artists, with several notable names among those he listed. I could see why: it was a classic example of a Bucks County Farm, with a field stone and white-washed stucco farmhouse, a small springhouse, and a beautiful collection of deep red barns and outbuildings situated on a grassy rise up behind the house. The only problem is, the Prettiest Farm in Bucks County, PA isn’t in Bucks County; it’s in Hunterdon County, State of New Jersey. It’s located just above Stockton on Raven Rock Road, close to where Raven Rock Road meets Federal Twist Road. I initially stopped to take a photo of an old iron truss bridge on Raven Rock when I noticed the Zega farm on the other side of the creek.

Fortunately, my truck us only a little over 6 foot tall...

According to a metal placard mounted on the bridge, it had been constructed in 1889 and bore the name of it’s manufacturer, the Lambertville Iron Works. It seemed to be holding up quite well for a structure erected almost 125 years ago, when the heaviest loads it bore was a wagon full of hay bales pulled by a team of horses. Mr. Zega did tell me the bridge originally had wooden planks for decking, and during the 1970s it was replaced with a macadam road bed. He did not mention how many times artists may have used the bridge as a subject matter for a painting, but I imagine with such a picturesque farm right next to it, more artists have simply used the bridge as a backdrop, or as a way to cross over the creek and get to the Zega property.

Mr. Zega mentioned to me he didn’t really care if artists came and painted his farm and buildings, but it would be nice if one of them would give him a picture once in a while.

I walked up to the spot Mr. Zega had suggested, and did not see any other artists, nor any one else, for that matter. His black Lab walked along with me and investigated the tall grass and surrounding trees for any thing unusual. I guess artists visiting isn’t that unusual on the Zega Farm; if I can, I think I will try to paint two pictures of this property, and keep one for the exhibition.-Posted by Rich

Hot Dog, Here’s Johnny’s!

2010-06-26T19:01:00.000-07:00

Posted by Rich-
Way up in Northwest New Jersey, very close to the Delaware Water Gap, is a place that has been serving hot dogs since 1944. Situated on a scenic bend of the Pequest River in Warren County, it’s called Hot Dog Johnny’s and it’s worth the trip over blue roads to get there.

The day we traveled was a somewhat hot, humid last day of Spring, 2010. We drove up NJ Rt 31 from Flemington through Washington Township to Buttzville, NJ. I had hoped to visit Rudeville, NJ as well, but the map that had Rudeville located on it was left in my truck, and the map I had in our Chrysler didn’t show it. I still haven’t moved up to GPS technology, and rely on whatever folding map I have. It seems that I only recently mastered the art of re-folding a road map correctly to the way it looked when I first purchased it, so learning GPS technology and how to operate one of them while I drive at the same time seems a bit daunting at this time.

The advantages of new technology is appealing; but I have to confess the learning curve associated with how to operate the latest digital marvel correctly and to its fullest extent dulls my enthusiasm. History has shown that when I purchase a gadget or machine the next generation debuts quickly afterwards, or an entirely new technology is unveiled that pretty much makes what I purchased obsolete or laughable. I have boxes of 8-track and cassette tapes, floppy diskettes, zip drives, and 10 inch long cell phones that I’m not entirely certain what to do with. They all still work, they just seem more like what 78 rpm records were to us in the 1970’s: interesting relics, not obsolete enough to throw away but still too obsolete to use efficiently. So boxes full of 20th century technology sit in my garage, basement, and attic. I can hear it now: “Gosh, Grandpa, you talked on THIS phone?? This is so weird!!”

At least folding road maps have a useful life span of a decade or so before they too become interesting relics.

Without a GPS unit on the dashboard to guide our way, I inevitably took a wrong turn and was forced, with my wife’s prodding, to ask for directions…a universally humbling experience for a man, which probably accounts for the popularity of GPS units. You can get directions given to you while you drive without having to ask for them. If you make a wrong turn, the unit calmly recalculates the drive and advises you how to correct your route without telling you to stop and ask for directions at the next Mini-mart.

We stopped for directions at the farm market operated by Hensler Farms on the corner of Rt 519 and Brass Castle Road. A charming young lady quickly gave us the correct directions to Hot Dog Johnny’s ( just down the road and to the left on Rt 46) and while we were there we bought some rhubarb and sunflower plants. Great directions and great selection of plants and produce—I recommend it highly. You can visit their website here http://www.henslerfarm.com/.

Hensler Farm's produce stand-- a great place to get flowers, produce, and directions.

I suppose it would have been easier to use a GPS, but in this case it was a pleasant surprise to stop at this classic farm stand; when you pass a place like this it would be nice if the GPS voice could tell you “ You’re driving by a very nice place for garden supplies and vegetables… you should pull in and buy some flowers or something”. Even without the GPS, I think I will be stopping there again in the future. I marked the location on my folding road map.

So down the road we went to Johnny’s. Once you are on the correct road it is easy to spot the place: it’s the one with the huge hotdog billboard and all the cars in the parking lot. The classic appearance of Johnny’s immediately gives you the impression it has always been a roadside favorite; the type of place my parents would have stopped at with our family when I was a kid, with fond memories of stopping there with their parents a generation earlier.

Johnny's at last! When a place looks this cool, the food always tastes better.

Johnny’s started serving hot dogs in 1944, before moving to this larger location in the late Forties. I wondered how many people have stopped here since then, and how have many subsequently returned with their children and grandchildren. The genuine nostalgic appeal of the location and architecture make it hard to drive by without stopping. You can read more about the place here: http://www.hotdogjohnny.com.
I’m not an expert as hot dogs go, and by the time we located Johnny’s, got our order, and found a place to sit at an outdoor picnic table, I was pretty hungry; I would have to rate their fare as excellent, because it tasted pretty good and was very satisfying. The comfort of the mountain atmosphere on a hot day next to the swift running Pequest River also contributed to the relaxed feeling of being in a another decade altogether.

Johnny’s is more than just an interesting relic from another time; it’s a genuine piece of Americana that hopefully many more generations will enjoy in the future. I can hear it now: “Gosh Grandpa, you used to eat hotdogs here? This is so cool!!”

Cowboys

2010-06-22T20:25:00.000-07:00

Cowpokes, last weekend I went to the oldest weekly rodeo in the U.S. of A., right here in New Jersey. The Cowtown Rodeo in Salem County is held every Saturday night through September.

There was plenty of fancy riding to go along with all the events: Bull ridin', bronc bustin', calf ropin', and more.

Some of the cowboys are local boys, competing right up there with the best in the west. This was a great place to be on a hot summer night.

Indians

2010-06-22T20:09:00.000-07:00

Indians in New Jersey describe themselves as being hidden in plain sight. The Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape tribe claims to have been in New Jersey for 10,000 years (they are referred to by other Indians as “the Ancient Ones”) They have had a sort of diplomatic relation with Sweden for over 350 years, who they were in contact with before the English were in the area.

The Lenni Lenape do not support vices like drinking and gambling, and therefore are not involved with any casino activities. I’m kind of fascinated how a culture like this can preserve it’s traditions over such a long time, in face of oppression and relocations. The Lenni Lenape were put on a reservation in New Jersey before the country was even formed.

I recently attended a PowWow in Pilesgrove, which I found very inspiring. Although open to the public, it had a “for us, by us” feel to it. The participants seemed so proud to be doing their dances, and wearing their costumes, and singing their songs that it was great to witness.

Despite the Indian pride, they were more than accommodating in answering this outsider’s questions and posing for photos. I struggle with taking photos at times like this – what I see as a celebration of a culture can seem to others as bordering on exploitation. I hope that the photos inspire curiosity and understanding.

Fireworks

2010-06-20T17:53:00.000-07:00

Every Friday night there are fireworks over the New Hope - Lambertville bridge. They start at 9:30 and will continue through September. It's quite a big show for two little towns.

The Artists' Gallery is just a half block away at 18 Bridge Street in Lambertville, and we're staying open late for the fireworks so stop by and say hello.

Hidden Gardens

2010-06-20T13:56:00.000-07:00

For the past few years, the Artists’ Gallery has supported the Kalmia Club by joining them in their annual tour of the Hidden Gardens of Lambertville. The town has many small backyard gardens that people have transformed into wonderful little spaces that most people just don’t get to see.

Every year the Kalmia chooses a number of these gardens to be on the tour, and the members of the Artists’ Gallery paint or take photos of the gardens. The finished pieces are for sale later in the gallery, with a portion of the sale supporting the Kalmia Club. This year, the sale will be in December.

Some pieces, however, might make it into our September show. It is part of NJ that one does not usually get to see, and the gardens are unexpected. They sometimes include water features, topiary, exotic plants, and artwork. They are always beautifully arranged spaces.

This year I liked the exotic passion flower that is only in bloom a short time, and the mud maiden that will be covered in greenery as the summer progresses. One of the gardens features some works by local artist Bee McDonald Burke who does little wooden constructions comprised of colorful lines.

Lakota Wolf Preserve

2010-06-17T19:25:00.000-07:00

Our exhibit is in September, not that far away and I'm starting to freak out. I thought I better get caught up on some things I've been meaning to post and get out there and shoot!

The Lakota Wolf Preserve in Columbia NJ, near the Delaware Water Gap, really fits our theme for this exhibit – a New Jersey hidden treasure that you will only find when you get off the main highways. Other than the safari at Six Flags Great Adventure, who knew these kinds of wild animals were in New Jersey?

I shot there this past winter, and found the wolves separated into packs in large fenced areas. The operators Dan and Pam Bacon along with Jim Stein have been committed to saving wolves and providing a safe place for them in New Jersey.

Wolves are actually native to New Jersey, although they are long gone from the area. The preserve is home to relocated Timber, Arctic, and Tundra wolves, as well as foxes and bobcats.

Visiting the preserve is a bit surreal, as you travel through the forest to find the ever-vigilant wolves are awaiting your arrival. The pack misses nothing, as the eyes and ears are constantly alert for motion and sound. The guide explains the pack hierarchy and there are constant challenges and rebuttals by the leader. The challenger either backs down immediately or risks being killed, so the confrontations are short and violent.

Although these beautiful animals look very much like the loveable husky dogs in your neighborhood, the wolves are wild animals. They are socialized to be around humans, otherwise they would stay out of sight. That does not mean they are friendly, or that they will not bite or attack without warning. Another photographer I was with was not paying attention when one of the wolves got his snout under the chain link fence and bit the photographer’s foot. There were teeth marks on his heavy boot, had he been wearing sneakers the teeth would have left more than a scratch.

Visitors have two chain link fences between them and the wolves, photographers can pay $300 for access to the interior chain link fence, which has openings for unobstructed shooting. These access windows are large enough for a wolf to get his head through when open. Needless to say I used a long lens and kept aware of my surroundings. Still, I was often surprised to find a wolf closer than I expected.

This is an unforgettable day trip, and will remind you just how wild this state really is. Learn more at lakotawolf.com

Bed, Bath, and Beyond the Horizon

2010-06-17T18:45:00.000-07:00

Posted by Rich- A long time ago, so long ago it was before we had use of the internet or owned a cell phone (we’re talking 1993 here) my young family took a vacation. We traveled by car from Syracuse, NY, to Cape May, NJ. We loved the place, and have returned often, especially once we moved to Bucks Co., PA, only a 100 or so miles away from Cape May.

This initial trip in 1993 involved a full day of travel time; my two daughters were 5 and 3 years old, respectively, and we had to stop often. I found myself getting pretty weary as well towards the end of that day of driving, and we took one last rest stop just North of the city of Cape May in a small hamlet named Rio Grande.

Rio Grande was originally known as Hildreth, named after the family that built a General Store there around 1850. The area was located within a large plantation owned by the Aaron Leaming family, and the vicinity acquired the name “Leamings”, in deference to the owners of the land. Eventually, a direct descendant of the original land owner, the seventh Aaron Leaming, thought “Rio Grande” had an attractive sound and christened the crossroads with that name. Apparently, others liked the name as well, because despite the fact that there is no river running anywhere near the small town, the name stuck.

Although you could feel you were close to the ocean, Rio Grande wasn’t a seaside resort town; it wasn’t much of anything, actually, except a Wawa convenient mart* at the crossroads of Rts. 9 and 47, a few other structures, and acres of open farmland. Rt. 47 runs East/West between the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, specifically to Wildwood, only about 5 miles or so away from Rio Grande. Rt 9 runs parallel to the Garden State Parkway, with an exit for Wildwood where the Parkway intersects with Rt.47 on its way to the Ocean. Given the quietness of the place when I first stopped there, it seemed that most people must take the previous exit on the Garden State Parkway for North Wildwood onto Rt 147 a few miles back, or just decided to step on it and keep heading South until they reached Cape May and the very Southern tip of the State of New Jersey. Rio Grande felt like a sleepy pit stop you could choose to make before you entered the carnival atmosphere of Wildwood, or a place to stop and double check you indeed had secured the cooler chest and beach chairs to the roof of the car after you left Cape May and headed North.

How it used to be: A reconstruction of the Rio Grande train station ca.1900, in Historic Cold Spring Village, about 4 miles South of Rio Grande on Rt 9. (Image borrowed from www.hcsv.org/O_page/PressPage.htm)

At least that’s what it seemed like in 1993. 17 years later, it would appear most of the area has been paved with black top and marked off into rows for automobile parking in front of tremendous strip malls. The transformation of the area was a bit shocking to me at first. The Wawa is now a Super Wawa; the older, smaller scale regular Wawa building stands off to the side of the Super structure awaiting it’s fate, or perhaps a new tenant (a Super Duper Dunkin Donuts, perhaps?). Buildings that made the acres of black top necessary stretch from the Super Wawa on the corner of Rts. 47 and 9 to a point so far North on the horizon that you can no longer make out what exactly the business is, despite the large signs adorning the outside of the corniced facades of each retail store.

The Stores down the Shore: the big picture from behind the Wawa.

Perhaps it is a Target? Wal Mart? A Super Target…? Whatever it was, apparently enough people needed to stop there before entering Wildwood or Cape May to make this concentration of retail outlets necessary and viable.

In our case, it was the new Starbucks that made us stop at Rio Grande. Along with the Lowe’s, Michael’s, and Famous Footwear storefronts stretching out well over a quarter mile, Google maps had located the Starbucks for us in an adjacent strip mall. Apparently, neither Cape May or Wildwood has a Starbucks, and after a few days at the shore my wife Laurie was feeling the need for a coffee fixed the way she likes it. “Roughing it” to her is getting a hotel that does not have room service. Although Starbucks is a large chain of franchises, she knows she will get her coffee prepared exactly the way she likes it, whether in our home town in Pennsylvania or where she worked in Manhattan.

I’m not a coffee hound myself, but I can empathize, as I would drive a distance to get a hoagie prepared the way I like at a Wawa . The Wawa that had been in Cape May itself was shuttered and the building put up for sale, perhaps as a result of the Super Wawa a few miles away in Rio Grande. Crazy couples like us, craving caffeine and lunch meat prepared in a specific manner and willing to drive out of our way to get it, probably accounted for the big changes in the retail businesses here. I guess the developers felt confident that once we were in Rio Grande and satisfied with our deli and designer coffee selections, we’d stick around and buy some famous foot wear or select items for our bed, bath, and even beyond.

After getting the usual hot drinks at Starbucks ( A Grande, Soy, No Foam, No Whip, Two Pump Mocha for the lady, and a Tall Earl Grey Tea for me; I didn’t feel the need for a hoagie that particular day), I had to drive down the parking lot of this tremendous retail zone to see exactly what store was anchoring the other end of the parking lots. The far building turned out to be a Wal Mart, something of an anti climax, but I wasn’t really expecting anything unusual. It was a SUPER Wal Mart , though, the kind with a grocery store AND a McDonalds included within. We chose to enjoy our drinks in the car, however, and didn’t venture inside.

In it’s banality, I found the complex that seemed to have devoured the small crossroads community of Rio Grande fascinating. As we drove up the parking lot and past the ornate entrances of the chain stores on our left, we noticed a green patch of property about an acre in size jutting into the paved parking area and surrounded on three sides by parking places. It was an old cemetery with an ornate iron gate entrance, a preserved sacred plot of land that was evidence of a slower, simpler time in Leamings, when the residents still made their own coffee in the morning and probably never dreamed of something called a frappacino made with soy milk.

Saying that there has been a lot of growth and development in the area since 1993 is an understatement; the addition of the Starbucks and the improvement to the Wawa virtually guarantee that I’ll continue to stop at Rio Grande for coffee and hoagies when we make our trips to Cape May and Wildwood. If this of rate retail development continues , however, it might be known as SUPER Rio Grande by the time I make my next visit.

*For those who do not live Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virgina, or New Jersey, a Wawa is chain of great convenience stores with very good service and a good selection of food and sundry items. The corporate headquarters are located in Wawa, Pennsylvania. The name for the town is the native American Ojibwe word for the Canada Goose, and a goose in flight is featured as part of their logo. While a 7-Eleven tends to be more snack oriented, you can get a pretty good meal at a Wawa. Its just tough to say the name without thinking you’re talking like a baby.

More on Chuck's Farm

2010-06-15T20:18:00.000-07:00

Rich certainly captured the spirit of Chuck's farm in the previous post, I don't have much more to add other than some photos. I was able to visit recently for the first time and was greatly impressed by Chuck's ingenuity. He is very comfortable coming up with engineering solutions that are aesthetically pleasing, and this is evident all over the farm. It is also evident in Chuck's glass sculptures.

Whether it's the smart-looking goat barn, or the guest house that feels a bit like a chic tree house, everything here is recycled or reused with a touch of style. Even the outhouse has stained glass panels.

Of course, it's the animals that steal the show. The goats are already quite a bit larger than when Rich visited. They were a little skittish and I didn't want to chase them around, so I didn't get a lot of pics of them.

They are living in a goat paradise with a nice barn, lush pastures, and plenty of piles of wood and things to jump up on. They seem very content and happy here. I also met one of the tortoises, but he was gone when I went back to get a pic.

The towering pine forest was impressive, it's not easy for us on the east coast to think about pine tress as a crop to be harvested. It must have been amazing for Chuck to watch these trees mature on the farm during his lifetime.

Take Me Down to Chuckie’s Farm

2010-05-05T17:35:00.000-07:00

Posted By Rich- Baby Goats, Broken Glass, Living in a Laundry Truck, and Sri Yantras. All this and more in the space of two hours at the farm and studio of Chuck Katzenbach. I took my Senior Illustration students from Moore College of Art and Design on an informal field trip to his place this past week, on a gorgeous sunny spring afternoon. It was the day after our Senior Show, and a good way for some art students who had worked hard all year and felt the stress of a real deadline to be able to relax and enjoy a day away from Center City Philadelphia.
Artist Chuck Katzenbach explaining to art students how this solar heater warms his house and barn.

Four students rode the R3 Regional Rail train to Langhorne, PA with me, and we then drove to Lambertville, NJ. We met another of my students, who also happens to be a Mom, in Lambertville with her 5 – year old daughter, Mia. Mia was very interested in going along because Chuck had mentioned to me on the phone that he had some newborn baby goats. Chuck lives on top of a hill on Rt 579 between Lambertville and Hopewell, on a piece of property next to the stone house he grew up in; his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren live there now. One of my students who came along lives in Texas when she is not attending college at Moore, and her reaction to our drive along the Delaware and up towards Hopewell was "THIS is New Jersey??” Two other students riding with me who actually live in the Garden State closer to Trenton and Cherry Hill area had the same reaction: “THIS is New Jersey??”

Chuck named his operation “Sweet Sourland Farm”, as this region of New Jersey is referred to as “The Sourlands”, but Chuck produces some fantastic maple syrup from the maple trees on his property, so the “Sweet” adjective means more than just the appearance of the place on a sunny spring afternoon. His property is located close to the summit of Sourland Mountain, which at only 560 or so feet above sea level is not really impressive as mountains go. However, given the way large boulders are strewn about on the slopes, and vertical slabs of igneous rock prominently display themselves in outcroppings of argilite, the 560 feet looks pretty dramatic. It's also a great subject for landscape paintings.

Sourland Mountain is really the high point on a long, 17-mile ridge that also includes Baldpate Mountain, with reportedly great views of the Delaware River Valley. This great view probably didn’t matter to the settlers who discovered that this area may be great for painting landscapes, but it's not so good for farming. The boulders, igneous rock outcroppings, and that darned argilite, a rock noted by geologists for its impermeability, made for a lousy aquifer under the Sourlands. Chuck is fortunate in that he has a great spring on his property, so good that when it gets dry down the hill in Hopewell, people used to come to his area in horse-drawn wagons for water.

There wasn’t a heck of a lot going on in the Sourlands besides quarrying all that rock until better roads were built in the 1960s. The remoteness of the area attracted aviator Charles Lindbergh to build his home there; unfortunately, the inaccessibility of the area did not prevent the infamous “Crime of the Century”, the kidnapping and murder of his son, from occurring in 1932.

I didn’t tell my students any of this information while we drove to Chuck’s farm. We were listening to a different Chuck, Chuck Berry, play his greatest hits on the CD player as we drove. Getting closer, I slowed down but still drove right by his place, missing the driveway entrance; I have only been to Chuck’s farm during the winter prior to this, and then I could easily recognize his place by the large illuminated Peace sign he has adorning the cupola of the barn that fronts the road. He put it up as a Christmas decoration a few years ago, decided the message was worth announcing year round, and keeps it there in working order.

As a matter of fact, I hadn’t told them much of anything about what his place was like, which may account for their reaction when we arrived. I pulled my truck up in the driveway between the assortment of small natural colored utility buildings and parked in front of his house. Right away the reaction was "THIS is Chucks farm??”
The small buildings on the property are beautifully constructed by Chuck from timber he harvested from tall Eastern White Pine trees he planted with his father over 50 years ago, and with reclaimed lumber he modified in his own sawmill. Solar panels and solar water heating systems adorn the roofs of a few of the larger structures, and one cozy guest house set back down the hill has a living roof made of sod and other vegetation growing on the 30-degree pitched surface. The guest house is also constructed from reclaimed lumber and cast off materials, including a porch enclosed with large pieces of glass from discarded storm doors.

I think some of the students may have thought the setting would be more like a dairy or horse farm, with Chuck wearing blue overalls and a straw hat, and chugging up out of the North 40 on a John Deere tractor. Well, on his farm he has some goats, but that's about as far as the "e-i,e-i,oh" part goes...

Chuck is a fellow member of the Artists' Gallery Co-op in Lambertville with me. First thing we did was after the students met Mr. Katzenbach and his wife Bru was to see the day’s newborn baby and mommy goat in a straw-filled pen. The students (all girls , by the way; Moore is an all-women’s college) said “Awwwww, how cute!!” several times in unison and took pictures of the baby while Chuck explained how rewarding goat farming is, even with the small herd of 20 or so goats he presently has. He also said that of all the goat meat consumed in the United States, about half of it is served up in the area between New York City and Philadelphia, given the ethnic and religious make up of the population in this area and their taste and need for fresh goat meat. He mentioned that this little guy, and another out in the pasture that had been born a week ago would probably end up on a dinner platter before their first birthday, as the male goats tend to be more valued for their meat than anything else. I guess in an effort to avoid becoming emotionally attached to either of them, he had named this one “Stew”, and the slightly older male out in the field “Burger”. This sobering information on the reality of farming had a mitigating effect on the visitor's exclamations of how cute Little Stew was, but after a few more pix we went outside and Chuck explained how he has made efforts to be “green” with his operation.

The roof could use a little trim: the guest house, with the sawdust privy in the background.

The guest house with the living roof covering and recycled glass doors began it’s life as a chicken coop. It has the feeling of a neat little clubhouse, the kind we all would have loved to have had as a kid to escape from the world on a summer day and read comic books in. Being "green", the converted coop comes complete with an outdoor privy equipped with a sawdust commode. My student from Texas was extremely interested in the way the guest house was constructed, how the privy used sawdust and how the sawdust was used as compost. I was thinking about where I would have kept the comic books.

We were shown the Sugar House, where Chuck boils down sap to make maple syrup. It is also a somewhat rough hewn but neat and tidy structure, with pipes and tubes and chimneys and metal containers running about the interior in a somewhat Rube Goldberg fashion. On the wall Chuck had drawn a Sri Yantra, an ancient design symbol used in Eastern mysticism to balance the mind or focus it on spiritual concepts. Chuck told us it is a crystallization of the word “ohm”, and darn hard to draw accurately. He seemed to do a pretty good job of rendering it, though, and he has taught classes on how to do just that along with a course on understanding and utilizing it. You can find out more about the Sri Yantra design by visiting here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Yantra.

Magical Mystery Maple Syrup: the Sri Yantra in the Sugar House.

The house Chuck and Bru live in is a reassembled 1830's farmhouse from Berks County, PA. After Hurricane Agnes blew through in 1972 and caused widespread flooding in the Northeast, an area outside of Bernville, PA was being converted to a nature, recreational, and flood control area. This house was located in a spot destined to be at the bottom of a resevior, but instead of being bulldozed, it was purchased, disassembled, and the components moved to an area above New Hope, PA. It remained there for a time until Chuck purchased the whole shooting match and moved it piece by piece up to his acreage in the Sourlands. He reconstructed it with improvements in the utilities and insulation, as well as altering the interior layout. It’s a beautiful place, and on the wall of the kitchen Bru pointed out a picture of their first home: an early 1960’s International Harvester panel truck that Chuck and Bru lived and traveled in during the late 1960s and early ‘70s. It was a former delivery truck for an industrial laundry, and perhaps prophetically, they painted it green. After a nice lunch and fascinating stories about traveling around the country in a one seat laundry truck with a pot belly stove in it, we were shown Chuck’s gallery and studio.

Chuck explains the intricacies of cut glass and oil paint assemblages; Mia was not impressed.

The downstairs portion of the converted barn with the illuminated Peace sign on the cupola is a combination of garage and gallery, with motorcycles and vintage trucks on one side of the building and works by Chuck hanging on the other. Chuck works with oils painted on glass, and often cuts glass into geometric shapes and mounts them in layers inside a box frame. Sometimes primary colors are used in conjunction with interlocking shapes to create works that remind me of the Op-Art movement. With his background as a craftsman complimenting his work as an artist, his abstract assemblages are both thought provoking and look good in the sunlight as well.

I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass:
Chuck didn’t, especially after this cut glass version of a Sri Yantra fell off a gallery wall and broke a second work of his.

Upstairs are his glass cutters and table saws, next to a well-used studio with easels, drawing tables and a comfortable couch. Also occupying space in both rooms upstairs is an abundant supply of plate glass and lengths of wood, waiting to be transformed into his next project. True to his “recycle, reuse, repurpose” philosophy, this large amount of glass is a collection of cast off pieces given to Chuck by friends who no longer need it, or glass he scrounged off the curbsides on trash night. He mentioned he will probably never run short of glass for his projects, and politely turned down my offer of the 10 or so pieces in my basement that were left there by the previous owner.

Burger, or just a Quarter –Pounder? Mia finally gets to pet a baby goat.

We stopped in the pasture to see the goat herd and check out Burger, the one week old male, who entertained us with his leaping ability and over all baby animal cuteness. Mia in particular was charmed by the baby goat, and the goats were charmed by the prospect that Farmer Chuck may be getting them some food, so they clustered about us…
It soon became evident to the goats that Chuck was not there to feed them, so they wandered off down the pasture and we wandered back to my truck. All of this was getting to be a lot for my students to absorb in a few hours; They seemed a little overwhelmed and mostly amazed by everything Chuck and Bru have done and accomplished. It was getting time to drive back to Langhorne and catch a train to Philadelphia, so we said our thank yous, goodbyes, and good lucks and headed back towards Lambertville.

And THAT was Chuck’s farm.

Sunday, Chilly Sunday…

2010-04-21T20:11:00.000-07:00

Posted by Rich- Recently, one of my students let me know about an upcoming “Classic Car” show that was taking place in Pennington, NJ. Sponsored by a bagel shop, it was set to run from 10 AM to 3 PM on an April Sunday that turned out to be a chilly, mostly cloudy day. I wasn’t able to get there until 1:30 PM, mostly because of other chores and the fact that I did not especially feel like getting out early into the cold breeze that morning. These “classic” car shows can be a crapshoot anyways, with some people considering a 1986 Chevy Cavalier a “classic” and hanging fuzzy dice off the rear view mirror. My thinking in this case was it is better to arrive later than sooner for a car show, as the organizers of these events usually wait until the last hour of the show to present the awards. Any type of awards presentation earlier ensures a steady parade of classic car owners slamming down hoods and gunning 500 horsepower engines through crowds of spectators as they collect their trophies and beat it hastily out of the parking lot and back to the safety of the garage. This mass exodus from the event also includes the many disgruntled owners who did not collect an award for their ride. Wheeling away, they demonstrate to the judges who had dismissed them in favor of a different car just how throaty the V8 under the hood sounds as they step on it and squeal the tires out of the exhibit area. Sometimes it seems the owners of the cars on display decide all at once that the show is over, and the best place for their muscle car or street rod is any where but the parking spot they had just occupied for the last five hours.

It should have tipped me off of what to expect at this particular show when I noticed a few mid-60’s Corvettes passing me the opposite way on Rt. 579 back towards Pennsylvania. After a few wrong turns, I finally found the location of the car show in a parking lot behind some buildings in an office/shopping complex off Route 31 in Pennington. Judging by the size of the small trees bordering the lot, the whole development could not have been more than a few years old, and the bagels pictured on the signage of the host business appeared to have the same color and texture as the faux cultured stonework adhered to the buildings. By the time I arrived, the show consisted of four late model Corvettes parked in a row with their hoods up, and a copper-colored 1972 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. A green and white 1973 Ford F-150 pickup truck was maneuvering to leave the parking area in front of the bagel shop just as I arrived. The owners of the Corvettes wore hooded coats and huddled in sling chairs next to their rides, and on the opposite side of the lot a DJ sat hunkered down in a lawn chair next to large speakers hooked to a laptop playing 1950’s rock and roll tunes. He barely moved in his down jacket as the tune “Barbara Ann” by the Regents played over the system. Perhaps lethargy had set in from consuming too many free bagels earlier…

I slowed my own truck down long enough to snap a photo and take a good look at the exiting Ford, and then kept driving. I find car shows where guys park Corvettes they recently purchased to not be very interesting unless you also have a Corvette to park and show off. Corvette owners at events like these are inclined to sit in their sling chairs and ignore us non-Corvette owners while they discuss among themselves how cool it is to own a Corvette. You often see newer model Corvettes parked and displayed at a “classic” car show like this. Some individuals work very long and hard hours to be able to purchase this assembly line ticket into the Corvette fraternity, and the senior fraternity members rarely sell their classic chick magnets on the open market. A clerk at the Department of Motor Vehicles once told me classic 1950’s and 60’s Corvettes only change hands because of a death or divorce. He himself had lost 2 to the latter.

Just because I'm leaving doesn't mean I'm ignoring you... 1973 Ford F-150 4x4

So much for the classic car show and MP3s of Fats Domino. I decided to check out a side road leading out of the eastern portion of the office complex towards the Borough of Pennington and came across something that WAS unusual: a large, polished aluminum travel trailer from the 1950’s. It resembled an immense, silver loaf of bread on wheels with a streamlined nose. Ignoring the Corvette owners and generic bagel shop two lots away, I had to park and examine this jet-age oddity more closely.

An insignia affixed to the side of the trailer identified it as a Spartan Manor, this model being a product of the Spartan Aircraft Company of Tulsa, Oklahoma, with a manufacturing date of 1950. Despite a few dents here and there, the impressive pop-rivet construction and polished surface looked remarkable for a 60 year-old travel trailer, especially one that most likely was considered obsolete by 1965. Further research showed that the Spartan Aircraft Company was once owned by J. Paul Getty, and produced airplanes designed and built for wealthy private pilots and sport fliers like Howard Hughes. After World War II, the company utilized it’s airframe technology and switched to manufacturing well appointed, all-metal travel trailers. Like the aircraft Spartan previously produced, these upscale models were intended for the wealthy and quickly became known as the “Cadillac” of travel trailers. The price for a Spartan Travel Trailer was upwards around $4000 dollars, at a time when the average house in the US was $8000. Considering what I recall of the Interstate highway system and road widths being like in the mid 1960’s, I can only imagine what it must have been like to pull an aluminum whale like this down the highway back in 1950. Full of furniture and appliances, this shiny, bulbous monster would have required a large Cadillac or Lincoln at minimum to pull it, and a very good braking system to stop it once it got rolling. I estimated the length to be at least 28 feet long; how in the world could you back this thing up into a driveway using a 1950’s sedan without power steering or power brakes? This was more like having the fuselage of a wingless B-29 attached to your rear bumper than a travel trailer.

Taking a peek inside through the front windows, it looked like the interior had been converted into a pre-school recreational area, with padded floors and walls and a host of brightly colored objects children could safely use to burn off energy with out inflicting head trauma on each other in the process. It appeared the whole operation was meant to stay put on the corner of the parking lot it occupied, and no signage indicated it was used as a rolling pre-school indoor gymnasium. Seems like a good idea; it would be much easier to bring the kids to this location than to pull this small house from neighborhood to neighborhood. I was impressed, however, that sometime between 1950 and 2010 this behemoth at least made it half way across the country from Tulsa, Oklahoma to a parking lot on the edge of Pennington, NJ. I wondered what other parts of North America it may have rolled over and through during it’s lifetime.

The big, shiny blimp on wheels...

Across the parking lot, one more Corvette owner decided to call it a day and started up the engine of his dream machine. I suppose the original owner of this Spartan Manor travel trailer may have felt much the same way in 1950 about his gleaming status symbol as the gentlemen sitting in the sling chairs next to their ‘Vettes felt on this chilly afternoon in 2010. I think I ‘d like to have met the first owner of this big shiny beast, though. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be the type to ignore you.

Counting the Cars on the New Jersey Turnpike

2010-04-03T13:42:00.000-07:00

Posted by Rich- Well, I still haven’t been to the Bendix. Up and back to Manhattan two times over a span of 60 days or so, and I didn’t stop in either time at the shiny Bendix Diner in Hasbrouck Heights NJ to take pictures and sample the fare. It is not too far from the George Washington Bridge, but far enough out of the way from the New Jersey Turnpike that a detour from my mission to get up to the Society of Illustrators on E.63rd St with fifty thousand dollars worth of original artwork in the rear seat of my pickup truck did not seem prudent. The artwork in the backseat was original illustrations by other artists who told me just how much they were worth, and consequently I drove in a manner similar to the way I drove my first newborn daughter home from the hospital. The artwork, coupled with driving in Metropolitan NY/NJ and Manhattan, helped me decide that stopping at a shiny diner for a shot of caffeine in the form of a cup of black coffee wouldn’t be a good idea. With my already jangled nerves, caused mostly by driving so carefully in fast moving congested traffic, I drove past the exit to the Bendix and kept on the Turnpike. I made a promise to myself that I will get back up there in nicer weather, and even though the food did not get great reviews ( “The food is awful, and the portions are too small!”) I will also get something to eat. Besides, these classic old diners really aren’t about the food or portion size for me, it’s about the classic old diner itself. Hopefully, the Bendix will remain in business and in one piece long enough for me to get there and get some photo reference. Perhaps my co-exhibitor John can get up there and take some pictures; I’m not a very good photographer, and if I try to do a photorealistic painting based entirely on my own photos, I end up with a lousy photorealistic painting.

My thoughts on the Bendix Diner remain as fuzzy as this image of the eatery borrowed from Google Maps...

So I remained on the New Jersey Turnpike all the way up to the George Washington Bridge. The drive on this expressway, also known as I-95, to Manhattan can be somewhat tedious, especially in late winter; mile after mile of industrial sites broken up by nondescript exits to nearly identical franchises and business clustered around the end of the on/off ramps. There are a few highlights on the northern stretch of the turnpike I travel, though; the highway runs parallel with the runways of Newark International airport, affording a great view of commercial airliners taking off and landing. You also get a great view of modern landing gear as these jets make their final approach over the roof of your car at a height of about 30 feet. When a jet comes in over your car at that height, traveling only about 60 miles an hour faster than you, everything you learned in physics class flashes through your head. As the gigantic metal bird wobbles in the air over my car and the mass of its wings blot out the sun, I find myself trying to remember the formulas that explained how airspeed and wing surface area create lift. Hopefully, enough lift is being created to keep this Fed Ex MD-11 from landing on top of my Toyota truck with fifty thousand dollars worth of original artwork in the back seat. Other sights on the ride include the expansive wetlands near Newark, crisscrossed with service roads, truck routes, and railroad tracks. In addition, there is….hmmm…well, the George Washington Bridge. Highway traffic signs on I-95 begin promising you will arrive to cross over “The George” 20 or so miles before you actually see the structure. Or, begin threatening that you will soon cross over it: the toll is now $8 per car, and sometimes traffic has been so heavy it feels like we start queuing up at about that 20 mile mark, with the non-EZ Pass equipped drivers frantically searching purses, wallets, and in between car seats for the $8 fare.

Maybe it is the highway itself, or the fact that the gray-brown-ochre colored landscape looks even more mundane compared to the shiny tops of Manhattan skyscrapers peeking up over the horizon, that makes this stretch of highway so boring and tedious. At intervals , impressive erector-set style bridges arch their way up over the swampy Passiac river, hopefully leading to a place that is greener and less congested. Being a toll road, however, gives this stretch of New Jersey the opportunity to have rest stops complete with food, fuel and souveniers in addition to the required bathroom facilities and wall-sized map of the highway. These large maps in interstate rest stops almost always have a symbol somewhere on them indicating ”You are HERE”, eliciting sighs from the drivers and travelers standing before them. It’s sometimes even more tiring seeing how many more exits and rest stops you have to pass and endure before you arrive at your destination illustrated in large format before you.

This stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike HAS been livened up, though, with these rest stops and bridges on both the north and south bound sides acquiring interesting memorial names. Traveling South, you come first to the Vince Lombardi Rest Stop, and heading north on the other side of the eight lanes, the first stop I encounter after entering the toll road is the Joyce Kilmer Rest Stop. Unfortunately, aside from the names, the rest stops themselves are the usual collection of typical mall-flavored food court franchises and restrooms where hopefully more than half the automatic flushers on the urinals are correctly functioning. Oddly enough, more than a few people have mentioned to me the reputation that certain named rest stops have earned as places for prostitution and drug dealing, with the Lombardi rest stop in particular gaining a reputation as a place for male homosexual activity. Maybe it’s the name, or the location that has helped this rest stop gain that reputation? I’m pretty sure it is not because of an outstanding souvenir shop. Beside the reputations for different types of illicit behavior, there is not much except for the sign out front to distinguish the Joyce Kilmer from the Vince Lombardi. I had hoped to find staff workers inside who adhere to the philosophy of the rest stops namesakes, with the Roy Rogers grill man at the Kilmer waxing poetically about the burgers he was frying and the custodial help pausing to reflect on the beauty of the saplings planted around the parking lot perimeter while they grabbed a quick smoke, but found nothing like that. Similarly, although I knew a regimented and disciplined foot ball team atmosphere would be too much to expect at the Lombardi, it was disappointing when the Starbucks manager did not blow a whistle and bark my order for a Tall Earl Grey Tea to the barista. I did appreciate that you do not have to run through an automobile tire obstacle course and smack into a tackling dummy on your way in from the parking lot, but it would be fun to see the Sbarro workers diagram a play after taking your order and try to get a Stromboli to you before the clock runs out. I used the bathroom there, but did not notice any thing that could contribute to the reputation of this or any of the other rest stops along the turnpike; of course, I only learned of the various reputations subsequently. I don’t think any of these are going to cause me to ”hold it” , and keep driving for the next hundred miles until I get to a Pennsylvania rest stop with a more sterling reputation. I do think , however, that at least a few food items reflecting the famous individuals who lend their names to these rest stops is in order. Perhaps a Green Bay Burger, served with a Quarterback Sneak Soda and an order of Fourth and Ten Fries would be good for the Lombardi, or Dueling Aaron Burr Burritos would be a nice feature at the Alexander Hamilton Rest Stop.

Outside the Alexander Hamilton are five brass plaques indicating who some of the erector set styled bridges in the vicinity are named for. The Newark Bay Bridge has a more official name, the Vincent R. Casciano Memorial Bridge, and is named for a New Jersey State Assemblyman who evidently made funding this structure a priority. The plaque indicates he only served for 4 years however, so getting a big bridge like this put in place in a 48 month time span seems like quite an accomplishment, especially considering he probably had a lot of other issues to deal with during his time in office. The Chaplain Washington Bridge is named for the Rev. John P. Washington, a New Jersey native who, along with 3 other U.S. Army Chaplains, gave up his life jacket and his place in a life boat of the torpedoed troopship U.S.S. Dorchester in February 1942 and went down with the ship. Another plaque gives the history of the Lewandowski Hackensack River Bridge, named for the three Lewandowski brothers from Lyndhurst, NJ, who also made the ultimate sacrifice and were killed in action during World War II. The fourth plaque announces the Laderman Bridge, named for New Jersey Turnpike collector Harry Laderman of Fair Lawn, NJ. The plaque explains that he was killed in the line of duty in 1967, but does not elaborate on exactly what the line of duty for a toll collector is; further research turned up nothing about the events surrounding his death that year. I was left wondering what circumstances may have occurred on a New Jersey Turnpike Toll Plaza that could equal the actions of soldiers killed in battle or the selfless act of giving up your life jacket so others could survive in a sinking ship the North Atlantic. The bridge itself is relatively impressive, and this plaque has piqued my curiosity; time for some more research. The last plaque details the namesakes of the Wallberg-Lovely Bridge, named for the first two New Jersey natives killed in action in World War I: Martin Wallberg and Luke Lovely. It probably would have been a good idea to just name it for the first soldier killed in action, Private Wallberg, as naming a municipal structure after a person whose name could also be used as an adjective can be problematic as time goes by. The Wallberg- Lovely Bridge is in fact pretty ordinary as bridges go, and you would be hard pressed to refer to it as “Lovely”, although these types of structures often become referred to by shortened names, as I referred to the George Washington Bridge as simply “The George” earlier. It seems likely that this bridge would be referred to as “The Wallberg” by those who use it regularly, or by traffic reporters. Although it is an undeniable tragedy that either soldier lost his life in Europe in 1917, it is fortuitous that Private Wallberg was the first soldier to die and the bridge did not end up with the moniker “Lovely-Wallberg” attached to it, giving people the impression the bridge was named for a good looking Jewish boy. Joyce Kilmer ( Full name: Alfred Joyce Kilmer. In college I was as surprised as anyone to discover Joyce was a man) was also killed in action during World War I, falling victim to a sniper's bullet. However, it is most likely the short poem he wrote about trees earned him the name on the rest stop as opposed to his service to his country. I'm not entirely certain what specific type of illicit behavior is credited to the Kilmer; I rarely stop there, having followed my parents sage advice to use the bathroom before I get in the car for a long trip. Or before a ride to Grandma's, too.

The Joyce Kilmer...named for the Famous Son - not Daughter - of New Brunswick NJ, and at one time also a resident of Mahwah.

As municipal structures go, it is fortunate in this case that the last name applied to these stops and bridges isn’t something that could be misconstrued as a negative or silly description; over the past 45 years or so I have known of and/or worked with people with last names that have ranged from Krapf, Finkboner, Boop, Outhouse, and Rusted. Any engineer would have a tall order to design a bridge that would come to be called “The Lovely”, but what engineer would want to be responsible for a structure known as “The Krapf “, “The Finkboner”, “The Outhouse” or “The Rusted Bridge”?

The Atlas, Shrugged Off

2010-03-07T18:28:00.000-08:00

The Atlas, used at last...

Posted by Rich -
I recently ferreted out an old Atlas my Father brought home from work one day in the late 1960’s. It’s rather tattered and creased, but I think it is remarkable that it lasted as long as it has. I retrieved it from a box of old magazines in the attic to take a look at how the roads had changed since it was given to my Father as some sort of safety award over 40 years ago. My Dad worked in a steel mill that made specialized alloys, and at one time his job on the factory rolling mill consisted of using hand held tongs to catch bars of red hot steel as they flew out of furnace rollers and across a polished floor. With a crew of three other men, they would grab the hot bar as it slid, and together throw it back across the floor between more rollers (click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_mill for a more accurate description of this metallurgical process). Looking at this soft cover book now, I honestly think he should have received more than this as a reward for staying injury free in a work place that daily featured red hot metal bars sailing across the floor. At least, a hard-cover version would’ve seemed more adequate.

It is interesting, however, to look in this 40+ year old book with it’s safety and travel tips and contrast it with the landscape and technology of 2010. I suppose we all thought we would be traveling by nuclear powered vehicles hovering inches above immaculate high speed roadways by now, but when you consider we can use a single hand held device to communicate by voice, email, text, video, and access the Global Positioning System and National Weather Service all within seconds, the future turned out to be pretty impressive after all. I noticed looking at the map section of the Mid-Atlantic States that I-95 was still in small unconnected sections, with the same going for Route I-81 that now stretches from Virginia to the Canadian border above NY State. The highways and roads that interchanged around metropolitan New York and Philadelphia looked very confusing and absolutely intimidating; I’m glad I wasn’t a young driver trying to navigate my way through these areas in 1965. As much as I may disparage the four-lane expressways across the country as impersonal and uninteresting, when it comes to getting to where I want to go in the shortest amount of time possible, I am glad to take advantage of them. And the map of New Jersey included in this atlas, small as it is, does indeed include the town of Mahwah. I believe Ford still had a large automobile assembly plant there making Thunderbirds and F-100’s at the time. I-287 that now runs by the former site of the plant was just a dotted line on the map with the word “Proposed” running along side it in very small type.

I recall looking for hours at the maps in this booklet and committing to memory the safety tips included within. I imagined my family packing up our Fairlane 500 station wagon for an extended road trip, and just as we were about to leave, ceremoniously placing this Atlas in the vehicle. It would of course need to be within easy reach of the driver (in the glove compartment!) in case it was needed for reference as we navigated our way across the Rocky Mountains or the Florida Everglades. It was especially important to have it on hand in the case of a flat tire or any other roadside emergency for advice on exactly how to handle that situation.

This Atlas remained unused however, as almost all our family trips were up NY Routes #12 and 28 to the Adirondacks, less than hour away from our house. My father knew these roads so well he could have probably driven them with his eyes closed. Given that the ride to Old Forge seemed almost interminable (actually 55 minutes at most) and I always sat in the rear facing jump seat of the Fairlane wagon, a trip to the Rockies and beyond would’ve been too much to bear. We rarely went much further than Eagle Bay on a single ride, and the Atlas went unused. Just as well, there were no words of advice in it on how to handle the boredom of a long car trip in the rear facing seat of a 9 passenger station wagon.

I think I really hung on to the booklet because of the illustrations, executed with a tidy early 1960’s stylization. The Atlas bears a copyright mark from 1967, “before things went all hippie”, as an older designer I worked with in the art department at General Electric once remarked, regarding the visual culture of the 1960's second half. I was only 7 years old at the time this book was printed, so when things “went all hippie”, I actually thought it was pretty cool. For stylistic visual changes, I personally use a different timeline: the first one I noticed occurred in 1973 or so, when it seemed everything “went all Bicentennial”, with colonial red, white and blue and decals of Minutemen and eagles appearing everywhere. This Atlas may well have survived so long because it spent a good part of that decade ensconced in a metal 20 gallon paint can that my mother had fashioned into a colonial-looking drum around the same time. As crafts projects go, it was pretty ambitious, with a circular plywood top cut to the circumference of can opening and upholstered with fabric decorated with eagles and Betsy Ross-style U.S. Flags. This project required a lot of work to complete, and I guess it was intended as a magazine holder, because it sturdily performed that function in our family room well into the early 1980’s. Somewhere along the way, I transferred the Atlas from the can/drum/magazine holder to boxes of old magazines I collected as an illustration student. In the pre-internet days, we were advised by our college instructors to begin assembling a “morgue”, or clip files, of pictures of different subjects to keep on hand as photo reference for illustrations. For years I dragged around boxes of magazines and pictures in folders and small metal file cabinets, never knowing what I may need next. I still have a file cabinet full of “swipes”, as some older illustrators called them, in my attic. Even though the practice of collecting all this material has been rendered obsolete by Google and other internet search engines, just like the faux colonial metal drum/magazine holder/craft project, it was a heck of a lot of work assembling all those clips from People and National Geographic magazines and I am not about to abandon all that effort too quickly. Unlike the drum/magazine holder, though, I doubt I will be able to sell this collection of material at a yard sale; however, if my internet goes down, and I have a rush freelance illustration assignment to draw a picture of Andrea McArdle performing her role of Annie in 1977, I’m prepared.

an illustration from the Atlas...
hmmm.. that car looks like a Fairlane...

Nearly Night in Titusville

2010-03-01T11:58:00.000-08:00

Posted by Rich-A relatively calm day weather-wise, and I found myself with a few minutes to spend working on this show. Whenever I begin the process of preparing for an exhibition, I always worry that I won’t have enough images to create paintings from– I’ve always relied on photographic reference to create my work – but I usually end up with more inspiration than I can use, and a few sketches that never quite make it to finished paintings. The feeling that I won’t have enough works completed by September 1st was eating at me, and with the day looking somewhat sunny, I decided to head over to New Jersey and see what I could get for reference. Hoping for some opportunities to get pictures with nice long shadows in the winter sun, I drove over the Washington Crossing Bridge to Route 29 and turned north towards Lambertville. Fortunately, this narrow bridge between Pennsylvania and New Jersey is only 10 minutes away from my house, and with the sun just a half hour or so from setting I decided to take the first left turn after Washington Crossing State Park into Titusville. Both PA and NJ have Washington Crossing State Parks on their sides of the Delaware River respectively, one park to commemorate where George and company launched their boats and the other to mark where they landed shortly afterwards. Titusville is located directly north of the park on Rt 29.
I’m not entirely certain how big Titusville is, but this section of the town occupies a very narrow strip of land between the Delaware River and the old D&R Canal, perhaps 200 yards wide at it’s narrowest point. The street that runs parallel between the river and the canal is occupied by classic old frame houses that appear to be meticulously maintained and very comfortable at the same time. It’s as if the entire strip along the river was modeled after a Norman Rockwell guide on how to make your house appeal to your grandchildren. Couples strolled along the sidewalk that ran along the Delaware River on this somewhat warmish winter afternoon, passing by the Old Baptist church from the 1800s and the Titusville Academy, a classic brick and stone school building that appeared to have been built shortly after the turn of the last century and was still enjoying use by young children. As I walked through Titusville and took some photos, I could see homeowners had switched on their porch lights in anticipation of sunset, and interior lighting inside was already giving these classic structures a warm glow from within. I caught a glimpse of a gentleman sitting in his glass enclosed sun porch reading his Sunday paper in the warm light of the setting sun. All very idyllic. Idyllic, except for the guy in the baseball hat walking around with a tri-pod taking pictures… After exchanging a few polite greetings with a strolling couple or two, I realized halfway through my snapping of pictures in this small, picturesque edge of New Jersey that a guy who parked a pick up truck with PA plates across from the Baptist Church and was taking pictures of the houses might not fit in with a Norman Rockwell guide at all; perhaps a chapter in the Crimestoppers textbook would be more applicable, and the porch lights were being flipped on just in case I turned out to be more Norman Bates instead of Norman Rockwell. After some quick consideration, I decided to fore go an attempt to get a picture of the man reading his paper on his sun porch, and thought I could perhaps get better shots of a seemingly unoccupied house straddling the street and the river further up the road. It also occurred to me it would be easier to use my artistic license and paint the warm glow of interior lights in these lovely houses than explain to the Town of Hopewell Police why I seemed to be casing the town and taking photos. At least, I think it is the Town of Hopewell Police that have jurisdiction there. I wasn’t about to hang around and find out.

Notice the light in window...Photoshopped in...

2010-01-20T18:26:00.000-08:00

Posted By John - Many thanks to Rich for coming up with the idea for this project/exhibition, and for taking the initiative in launching this blog. I hope to share my thoughts about this project as it unfolds, so people can participate and react as it develops.

I’m trying to capture images of things that you would think you’d NEVER see in New Jersey, as well as things that you’d think you would ONLY see in New Jersey. I’m hoping that when seen together it will look both weird and familiar – and that’s exactly the way that I see New Jersey.

Every state is urban and rural , tangled and desolate, hot and cold, old and new. But in New Jersey it’s the people, not the place, that can be described that way.

Ultimately, this project is about the people of New Jersey. Whether they appear in the work or not, they are the ones who built the quirky and majestic monuments to the human spirit throughout the state. And they are the ones who preserved the remaining open spaces and wilderness.

So, follow us on the journey, and tell us where you’d like it to go. I know I’ll be taking photos of diners, the shore, and the Pine Barrens. There’s a large altar in the woods in Mt. Holly with the inscription “Holy, Holy, Holy”. There’s a big tooth sculpture along the roadside in Hamilton. And I’m just getting started…

The Long Way to Lambertville

2010-01-17T20:32:00.000-08:00

Posted By Rich-A sunny weekday during semester break afforded me a chance to take a few back roads through New Jersey on my way to pick up work from the Artists’ Gallery in Lambertville. Instead of heading up Rt 29 from Washington’s Crossing, I entered into New Jersey on I-95 using the Scudder’s Falls Bridge over the Delaware River (and although I am well acquainted with the Pennsylvania side of the river at that point, I have never seen a waterfall in the vicinity I consider large enough to name a bridge for. Maybe the name comes from the NJ side…?)
I took the North off ramp of the second exit on the interstate, and almost immediately I was obliged to take a detour, so it became a rather easy task to take a road less traveled. Well, one less traveled by me, anyways. Seems like all of the roads in this part of the country have heavy traffic.
The afternoon sun cast long shadows over nondescript office parks and even more nondescript housing developments that appeared like odd growths on the former farmland. Styles of the houses reflected boom times from different eras: post WWII Cape Codders , sprawling ‘50s ranches, split levels from the ‘60s and ‘70s, and odd “transitional” styles from the 80’s and later that we have come to know collectively as “McMansions”. Following the detour signs, I ended up in Pennington and stopped at a service station to buy a road map of NJ. After studying it briefly, however, I decided it wasn’t a very good one: for instance, it completely omitted Mahwah, a larger northern NJ town near the border of New York Sate and the home of inventor and guitar great Les Paul. Mahwah is also a landmark I use when racing up I-287 to the Tappanzee Bridge and over the Hudson to get my daughter at college in New England.
I drove north out of Pennington through intermittent collections of dwellings that ranged from modest farmhouses to the aforementioned McMansions, houses that seemed ridiculous by contrast with ostentatious displays of ornamentation and imitation stone work. Eventually I entered the delightful town of Hopewell, NJ. I had been to Hopewell once before with a good friend who grew up there in the 1950’s and early 60’s, and it appears that not much has changed since then. My friend gave me the cook’s tour of the place on that day and I was glad to return and have a chance to take a few pictures. I parked my truck and walked a bit, heading towards the Hopewell train station. It is a grand brick Victorian structure, well preserved both inside and out and situated nicely by itself on the edge of town. However, it appears one of the things that have changed in Hopewell since the 1950s is that trains no longer make regular stops there, although the track is still active; a CSX freight rolled through and the echoes of the noise on the frame houses sounded like a jet aircraft taking off at Newark International. I walked around town for a while and shot some reference pix, and on a quiet side street (pictured above) a barking dog came running quickly across a yard at me. I was a bit alarmed when it became evident the dog was not restricted to the yard by an electronic device attached to it’s collar, but the dog’s wagging tail and happy bounce up to me showed me I had no reason to be afraid.

Greeted by a happy dog on a quiet street in a small town on a sunny afternoon; felt kind of nice to be in Hopewell right then.

2010-01-01T18:48:00.000-08:00

Posted by Rich
Rich is the one with the baseball hat on. John is the photographer, so of course his pic is the better one. John and I will both be posting images and messages about progress towards our exhibit at the Artists' Gallery in September, 2010.

Just this past week I had to deliver work up to the Society of Illustrators in Manhattan, NYC, and found myself yet again driving as quickly as possible through New Jersey. Seems like most of the time I travel through New Jersey I drive or ride the train as quickly as possible through it, whether going to the shore or to New York City. Other times I cling to the edges of the state, driving along the Delaware River or the Atlantic Ocean...I have always enjoyed John Steinbeck's book Travels With Charley, and even Steinbeck seemed to drive through New Jersey as quickly as possible. My paperback copy is 277 pages long, and Steinbeck devotes one short paragraph to his travel through the Garden State: "New Jersey was another turnpike. My body was in a nerveless, tireless vacuum. The increasing river of traffic for New York carried me along, and suddenly there was the welcoming maw of Holland Tunnel and the other end home." Granted, he was finishing up a drive around the country that took a few months and culminated with first hand experiences with the civil rights movement early 1960's, so who can blame him for not stopping and writing about the bridge over the Raritan River in Edison, NJ, with home at just the other end of the tunnel. Or, perhaps he did stop, and his editor axed that passage to devote more attention to his conversations about the "Cheerleaders" trying to keep New Orleans public schools from being integrated. However, I cannot claim that type of distraction, so for this particular exhibition John and I are undertaking we plan on driving the roads that are marked in blue on a road map of New Jersey that John has; for myself, diners have always been a favorite subject of mine, and New Jersey seems to have a fair number of interesting ones, so I am planning on making some of these trips to various diners that are listed on www.njdiners.com.

Not exactly a Steinbeckian journey, but I think I can get some pretty good reference for paintings. I suppose I could take my dog Maggie along, too.