Stu Jenks: Fezziwig Photography, Music, and Writing

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks: Chapter Six: "Stuart's Circle, Richmond, Virginia"

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks:

Chapter Six: “Stuart Circle, Richmond, Virginia”
© 1999, 2008

    Off to my left is Stuart Circle Hospital. Inside are my father Stuart and my mother Mary. Dad may be dying.    
    Dad is an ex-Marine who voted for Nixon three times and I’m an artist who voted for McGovern. But he has always told me that he loves me. Told me he loves me just a few minutes ago when I left the hospital for the night.
    The hospital is south of me, out of the frame. My Rollei is set up, pointing toward the monument of J.E.B. Stuart, at the far eastern end of Monument Avenue. I line up the shot, with the flood lit Presbyterian Church on the left, J.E.B. on the right, and the circular traffic in the foreground. People are taking their time going around the circle. Richmond is a Southern city. Still wonderfully slow at times.       
    I cock the shutter and wait. Waiting for the right set of cars to approach. The exposure will only be a few seconds long. There’s a car at the light. I open the shutter. The car slowly rounds the statue and leaves the circle. Then another car, and another. I wait, counting seconds in my head. I close the shutter. I do this for a few more exposures, but soon stop. My heart isn’t in it tonight.
    I walk to the rental truck, throw my Rollei and tripod into the back seat, and drive around J.E.B. Stuart myself, listening to Emmylou Harris singing about losing love, missing Elvis, and living life even as it fades away.
    I really wish Dad wasn’t dying. I cry hard without making a sound.

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks: Chapter Five: "The Hoodoos of Coalmine Canyon, Arizona"

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks

Chapter Five: “The Hoodoos of Coalmine Canyon, Arizona” 
(c) 2000, 2008

    I’m driving cross-eyed to meet the dawn. It’s four a.m. I left Tucson seven hours ago. The sky is still black. I’m so tired.
    North of Flagstaff, south of Tuba City, I’m listening to Bruce Cockburn, singing from the boom box that’s sitting next to me on the passenger seat of my 1985 Yellow Nissan King Cab truck. I bought the truck new, but it no longer has any power to speak of. Can’t even get it to pass emissions anymore. On my third carburetor now. 300,000 plus miles on the odometer. I’ll have to sell it soon, but it still gets me to places like Coalmine Canyon. At least I hope it does today.
    I left Flagstaff an hour ago with a full tank of gas, plenty of smokes and a cooler filled with Diet Coke. I just cruised past the Cameron Trading Post but I didn’t stop. Maybe I’ll stop on the way home. I’m sipping on a cup of fake cappuccino that I got at a Texaco station in Flag. Getting closer to Tuba now. Transmission humming a bit too loud. Nothing wrong with it. It’s just old.
    ‘Apartheid in Arizona, slaughter in Brazil. If bullets don’t get good PR, there’s other ways to kill. Kidnap all the children, put ‘em in a foreign system. Bring them up in no man’s land where no one really wants them. It’s a stolen land,’ sings Bruce.
    The Hopi pretty much escaped the boarding school system, I've been told by friends, but that wasn't the case for the Navajo, whose reservation I just entered back at Cameron. Many Whites took in the Navajos or rather took the children, changed their clothes, forbid their language, cut their hair and tried to make them into little white boys and girls. It didn't work; not in the long term. Just angered the Navajos and left an even greater divide between the Anglos and the Indians. Still some hurt, resentment and sadness exist to this day.
    The Hopi and the Navajo were traditional enemies. Hated each other hundreds of years ago, and still there are some sore feelings between some of the members of the tribes. From the Navajo perspective, they immigrated into this area and just wanted to have a little land to live on. But from the Hopi perspective, the Navajo were uninvited guests, who attacked them on their mesas, and felt entitled to land that wasn't theirs.
    Now that's an oversimplification of things. Today, many traditional and modern Hopi and Navajo, together, fight Big Oil and Big Coal, trying to protect their rights and their lands. A good friend of mine who is Navajo has been battling the oil companies for a while now, along with his friends and members of his family and God bless them for that. But people are people, and much like some of my Southern breathen who still see ‘Damn-Yankee’ as one word and who still smart when they think about The War Between The States, so too, to this day, do some Navajos still mess with some Hopis, and some Hopi still trick some Navajos.
    Just a few years ago, the Rainbow People were looking for a place to have their annual Smoke Dope/Have Sex/Be Spiritual/& Dance Till Dawn event. A Navajo woman said to the organizers that ‘you could have your gathering on my land.’ The Rainbowers were thrilled to have it on Native Land. Only problem was, after hundreds of them arrived and set up camp, the local sheriff informed them that they weren't on Navajo land but on Hopi land, and the Hopis rightly wanted them to leave. The White boys and girls left, but not after they had deposited a couple of days of shit in holes they had dug, on the Hopi property.
    It's a complicated thing, the relationships between Hopi, Navajo and Whites. Some hold on to old resentments. Some forgive and let it go. Some go about their business and don't make no never mind of it. Some continue to perpetrate. People are People, White and Native alike.
    “You’ve been leading me beside strange waters. Streams of beautiful, lights in the night”, Cockburn continues to sing.
    I’m approaching Tuba on U.S. 160. A line of dark gray is to the east. Just a hint of morning. It’s coming but not for a while. The reds and purples of the Painted Desert aren’t visible yet, but soon they will glow. Now, the mesas are just deep black humps and lines against a slightly lighter black sky. I drive past a crudely painted sign pointing toward dinosaur tracks. I see the old Laundromat that has unavoidable sand in its washers. And I then take a right at the Tuba City Truck Stop, which in any other little town, would simply be a small breakfast café with a very big parking lot. The decaying carcass of a Rezzie dog lies off the shoulder at the crossroad. (Many Navajos don’t talk of the dead, not touch dead things, so dead dogs and cats often slowly rot along the side of the road and then are eventually blown away by the strong mesa winds.)
    The Hopi village of Moenkopi is off to the right, perched on the cliffs that overlook the cornfields below. No corn now. It’s early Winter, late in the growing year. Moenkopi is far away from the traditional three mesas of Hopiland. I’ve often wondered if the Hopi and the Navajo of Tuba City got along better, due to being forced to go to the same schools, the same Basha’s grocery store, the same Tribal Health Care Center.
    The gray to the east is changing color to blue. Best beat feet if I’m going to get to Coalmine before dawn.
    [Coalmine Canyon (Coalmine for short) has been a sacred place for me since the mid-1980’s, when my friend Mike, who used to live in Tuba, told me about the place. At the time he asked me to promise not to tell just anyone about Coalmine, so if I’m a little vague on directions , that’s why. It’s not as if you can’t find it on a good Triple A Indian Land map, but you’ll have to do your own footwork. And be nice to the place, if you ever do go there.]
    Coalmine Canyon gets its name from a line of exposed strata, close to the top of the mesa, that consists of a very thin vein of coal. You can see parts of the canyon from the paved road if you look left at the right time, but the canyon doesn’t jump out at you. Coalmine is actually a number of smaller canyons falling off from a high mesa. It drops probably a good 800 to 1000 feet to the canyon floor. Its walls are pink, purple and white with a line of black, and the sandstone is so soft, you can easily crush it under your feet. Neither traditional Hopi nor Navajo medicine men go to Coalmine Canyon for they believe it is haunted, and it is said that on the night of a Full Moon, you can see the Ghosts of Coalmine dancing on the pink walls. I’ve never seen the ghosts but one time years ago, when I hiked deep down into the canyon, I felt the energies of good and evil having a little battle. Maybe I was just too hungry or too tired or I just imagined the whole thing. But maybe not. I’ve definitely felt dead spots in there at times, and in those places I do not stay long. Whatever, the energies are very very strong at Coalmine, both positive and negative. I’ve come here to pray, to shoot, to grieve, and to just be, for over fifteen years.
    This morning I’m going to the eastern part of Coalmine, an area I’ve only been going to for the past five years or so. Attempting to find the little dirt road that goes down into this section of the canyon is as much about sensing the road as it is about seeing it, and in the dark, I slow way down, under twenty miles an hour, continuing to glance to the left, trying to sense a break in the fence along the road. The paved road is straight in front and behind, for probably four miles either way. No traffic. No surprise. Always looking left and then, suddenly, I see it and I turn my truck onto the one lane track.
    Dirt roads on the Rez are ‘Subject to closure due to weather conditions’ as the maps say. Translation: If it’s been raining or snowing, getting back to Grandma’s hogan can be quite an adventure. The weather is dry this morning, but out of habit, I stop, get out, and check the ground. It’s good and solid. The earth here is a mixture of sand and dirt. More sand, less dirt. I get back in my truck and put it into gear. I go slow but not too slow. Too slow and I’ll may get stuck in the loamy soil. My truck is a 2 x 4, not a 4 x 4, so I have to keep my speed up, but not too much, for the shocks on my truck are just regular shocks. Plus my truck sounds like a box of rocks as it is. Knock it too much more and new rattles will appear. The current rattles drive me nuts as it is. Slow but not too slow, Stu, but not too fast. The middle automotive path.
    The one lane track descends down from the first level of mesa to the next level, but not the bottom of Coalmine. That’s way down there and miles away. No horses or cows in sight. No living creatures at all which is normal. The cows tend to be on the floor of Coalmine and the horses come and go as they please. I turn off the boom box. The bouncing of the truck tends to make the tape sounds yowwy, and now I must be present, to say the least. The dropoff to my right isn’t a couple of feet but a hundred feet or more. Slowly, I bounce down down the track.
    I level off at the bottom of the hill, or rather the top of this next part of the mesa. Coalmine proper is off to my left, still dark but visible as a space in Space, a blacker dark, and off to the east, the color black has more blue in it than it did a few minutes ago. The sun is coming.  Good. I’m almost there.
    [Coalmine Canyon is the bottom of an ancient sea. On one of my earlier trips into Coalmine, I was shocked to find prehistoric oyster shells. Breaking them apart with my hands, I could smell the faint hint of natural gas. On the high mesas surrounding Coalmine and on the canyon floor, small premature quartz crystals are scattered about, along with tiny black basalt balls ejected from a volcano 40 miles south, a thousand years ago. Coalmine is part of the Colorado Plateau which cover parts of four states; Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. The Colorado Plateau is one of the greatest places in the world to see sedimentary rocks. And here at Coalmine, it’s as if the rocks were just born, so soft and fragile and easy to harm. Like infants that never grew up.]   
    The eastern sky is all deep blue now, and there is a hint of orange too. Most of the stars are gone. After a few more miles, I come to a place where the ground is solid and firm, where I park the Nissan. I open the truck door and grabbing my tripod, my Rollei and my pinhole camera, I walk toward the rim of the canyon. The ground is soft with powdery loom that make little clouds as I walk. The baby crystals can be seen sparkling even in the dawn’s twilight.
    White peninsulas of sandstone jut out into the canyon like the bows of old sailing ships. I step out onto one bow of sandstone to go to a special place that I go too, a ways out. I’m careful with my feet, as much as to not disturb the rock, as to not fall 800 feet to the canyon floor. I reach my own personal prayer spot, and set up the tripod and camera. I see the shot. I compose the shot. I stop, and pray.
    Little black Hoodoos, three inches tall, grow from the top of the white sandstone formation. (Hoodoos are rock towers that have more rock on top than at the bottom. Imagine a carrot sticking in the ground, big end up. That’s a Hoodoo.) I’ve placed the Hoodoos at the bottom of my composition. I now attach a number of red filters on the Zeiss lens. I think I’m ready.
    Sun’s almost here. Lots of orange now in the eastern sky. My Zippo is in hand. I open the shutter and walk with a purpose to the Hoodoos, painting a flame spiral above the little towers. I then return to my Rollei, as quick as I can, and close the shutter. 15 second exposure tops. I advance the film, open the shutter again and walk back to the Hoodoos.
    Suddenly, like a light switch being clicked on, the Sun rises above the mesa and cuts a bright yellow slice on the far western wall of Coalmine Canyon. I hurry to the Hoodoos and paint another spiral with the Zippo. I click the Zippo closed with a loud ‘clack’ at the top of the spiral and move back to my Rollei and close the shutter. I pause, taking in the light and then repeat the process another couple of times. There. That should do it. The rising Sun could be visually too hot, for the flame spiral to show, but the sunlight in the canyon and on its walls, is glorious to see. And I do have a ton of red filtration on that lens. I smile. I’ll hope for the best.
    I carefully stroll to the far bow of this ship of stone and sit. And I sit for a long time. No photos. No Zippos. Just my eyes taking a picture for my soul to see.
    I have a prayer I wrote for myself years ago, so I can get centered in the morning. Frankly I forget to pray in the morning as much as I remember. But on this morning, on the rim of Coalmine Canyon, I don’t forget.

    To the East, God and Humanness,
    To the North, Courage and Vulnerability,
    To the West, Self-Awareness and Forgiveness,
    And to the South, Feelings and Wisdom,
    To the Sky and the Earth and All-There-Is,
    OK, God...
    Let’s do it!

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks: Chapter Four: "Ancestors' Circle, Arizona"

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks

Chapter Four: “Ancestors' Circle, Arizona”
(c) 1999, 2008

    A postcard with an image of The Ikon printed on it, is mailed to a friend in Prescott, Arizona, who then puts the postcard on his refrigerator door. Steve Roach visits this mutual friend, sees The Ikon, and excitedly says ‘That’s the image for my next album.’ Steve then shoots me an e-mail. A few weeks later, I’m sitting in his studio, east of Tucson, talking about his new album, and about how much he likes The Ikon. Steve also wonders if would I like to shoot some flame spirals in his back yard. Being a fan of Steve’s for years, I’m trying to be cool, but it’s very hard. I’m talking way too much. (Hush, Stu, Hush!) I see a row of a half dozen brightly painted didgeridoos leaning against his studio wall. (Holy Christ.) As calm as I can, I say “Sure, Steve. I'd love to come and shoot.’
    At the next Full Moon, I’m in Steve’s backyard, with my Rollei and my Zippo. He has this circle of Anasazi pot shards in his back yard that faces the Catalinas. His next door neighbor, an retired archeologist at the University of Arizona, gave him the shards and Steve has made a five foot diameter circle out of the old pieces. I draw a spiral in the dirt and procede to light-paint the night away in the soft moonlight. The music from the newly mixed tracks of “Atmospheric Conditions” is playing from these little waterproof speakers Steve has hanging from his porch roof. I shot a roll of 12, often thinking it doesn’t get much better than this.
    “Ancestors’ Circle” is on the back cover of the Steve’s CD “Atmospheric Conditions”. The Ikon is on the front. Steve and I have lost touch over the years, but I hear he lives with his wife on horse property near Sonoita, Arizona and I bet he's recording a new piece even as we speak. Bottom line: It just goes to show, send a postcard into the world, and you never know what opportunities will fly back at you.

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks: Chapter Three: "The Ikon at Catalina State Park, Arizona"

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks

Chapter Three: “The Ikon at Catalina State Park, Arizona”
(c) 1997, 2004, 2008

   
    It’s a cool Fall night in the Sonoran Desert. The Full Moon is just now peaking over an eastern ridge of the Catalina Mountains. A soft city-light spills over Pusch Ridge to the south. I hear coyotes yelping in the Canada Del Oro wash, beginning their evening hunt. [Note to city folk: Coyotes won’t hurt people. They’ll eat your cat or bushwhack your dog, but they will do you no harm. So if you are out in the desert at night and you hear a pack of coyotes, do not be afraid. I suggest you stop and listen and enjoy the song.]   
    I recently quit my job as a counselor at a prison to go back to school and learn how to shoot and print black and white photographs. I’m in my second semester at Pima Community College, working on a series called Sacred Spaces, but it’s quickly becoming a series on Circles and Spirals instead. These two archetypal symbols seem to be coming up a lot in my work. Perhaps I love the Circle and the Spiral because they are present in all cultures, representing many ideas; be it the journey in and the journey out, or a sense of completion and wholeness, or a moment of rest, or a holding of hands. Or maybe the Circle and the Spiral just show up because they do, like images in night dreams that make no logical sense but feel right to the dreamer. I really don’t know for sure, but I do know that they are here, now, in force, in my work.
    Carrying the old Rollei camera, my cheap lightweight tripod and some brand-new Ilford Delta 125 film, I walk from the parking lot at the entrance of Catalina State Park and move south toward Pusch Ridge and the C.D.O. wash. I have a new Zippo in my pocket for light-painting, and a rough idea of what I want to do. Not a firm plan. Just a crude outline. I’ve discovered that if I don’t listen to the land, the moonlight and the wind and just force my will on a place, I simply get contrived artistic crap. But if I move slowly, listen to the land, really see the moonlight, and feel the wind, then an idea of an image comes that harmonizes with the land and the sky, and we all become friends.
    I walk toward the C.D.O. I stop, listen, and see. I wander through the lush mesquite trees. I can feel the shot, but it isn’t here. Then a quiet inner voice tell me to go back to an ant hill I walked by a few minutes ago. Not really an ant hill but an ant flat. Here in the desert, black ants can be brutal, killing the plants and grasses above their colonies. Here is just such a place with no grass, nothing  but dirt in a rough circle of land about fifteen feet in diameter. I stop, listen and see. I nod. I then set up the Rollei on my tripod and compose the shot. I see what is there and I see what isn’t there yet.
    As I draw a spiral in the dirt with a stick, I see very sluggish little black ants wander in and out of their holes. It’s cold tonight. I apologize to them as I block a couple of their holes with my stick drawing. I walk back to the camera, focus it on the far side of the dirt spiral and then open the shutter. I then walk to the ant flat and begin light-painting with my Zippo lighter. This time I’m using the spiral on the ground as a guide to the flame spiral in the air. First exposure, not right. I can feel it. Second take, I’m not sure, so I close the shutter and advance the film. Third shot feels just about right. I back out of the field of view, after making another flame spiral and look at my watch and then look at the Full moon. Probably a twenty-minute exposure is what is needed. I wonder around the flats near the wash for a while, then mosey back to my truck, then stroll here and there among the trees. I can hear the coyotes singing their hunting song.
    Then suddenly, I walk through an icy cold patch of air in the flats, not attached to a wash where airs flow down from the high mountains or the cool settled air that is sometimes under a tree at night. Just a large patch of chilly air out in the open flats. Strange yet wonderful.
    The next day at school, I develop the negs and notice that my light painting was too low and too squat. Damn it all. Well, I’ll have go back out tonight and reshoot. The Moon will rise a little later but that'll be ok. Good news is the exposures of fifteen minutes at F 5.6 seem about right.
    That night I return to the ant circle where I had shot and I find a bizarre development. In the 24 hours since I was here, the drawn dirt spiral is almost completely brushed away, not by the wind or the rain, but by the tiny legs of hundreds of black ants. I redraw the spiral and nod my approval to the slow cold black ants.
    I light-paint a spiral higher this time, use the exposure I remembered from last night, and take the shots. I leave, not knowing that I’ve gotten the image I want. That will happen tomorrow after I develop the negatives. But I have a good feeling about it. I also leave Catalina State Park with a new respect for black ants.

    [Stu’s Fun Facts: “Catalina State Park, Arizona” got the nickname “The Ikon” from Steve Roach. Steve is an internationally known ambient musician who bought the limited rights to The Ikon, in 1999, to use as an album cover photo for his CD “Atmospheric Conditions”. One day on the phone, he just said, “It’s the Icon, man!” and it kind of stuck. I added the ‘k’ just as a postmodern joke. My ex-marine corps father when he listened to “Atmospheric Conditions” remarked that ‘It sounds like heavy breathing.’ No argument there, old man, but I think it’s a great CD. Check it out on Steve’s website.
    The Ikon has been one of my most popular images, and one that brings some of the most interesting responses from viewers. At the 1999 Tucson Museum of Art Biennial Show opening, a middle aged woman came up to me, pointed to The Ikon, and said “It is so amazing that you were there when They Came.” I began to tell her that the only ‘They’ there, were the hundreds of black ants on the ground, but she put a finger to her lips, quietly shushed me, and slowly backed away.         
    In 2004, the Mythic Journeys Conference in Atlanta, Georgia bought the use of the Ikon as the logo of their conference celebrating the 100th anniversary of Joseph Campbell’s birth and the role of myths and spirit in our world. The powers that be flew me out to Atlanta, not only to create an art installation for the conference’s art show, but also put me up at the Hyatt, to just be Stu.
    The Ikon was everywhere at the Hyatt, from large plasma screens behind the huge conference stage to the small Powerpoint screens in the smaller conference rooms; from a huge banner spanning the stairs to the cover of the brochure; from the front page of the Mythic Imagination website to even little square bumper stickers. The first day I was moved and proud to see The Ikon everywhere. By the fourth day, it just made me laugh. Dave Lewis, a friend and sculptor in Tucson at the Toole Shed, jokes with me sometimes, that there is ‘too much Stu’ in Tucson, referring to a time a number of years ago when I was in a lot of local shows in a row. I felt like calling him from the lobby of the Hyatt saying “Dave, you ain’t seen Too Much Stu until you’ve come here.” I was joking with friends at the conference that we should put my ‘ubiquitous image’ as one person called it, on prophylactics and call them “I-Kondoms”, but they didn’t get the joke. I forgot. Only folk in Tucson know it as the Ikon. I have to admit, when I got home to Tucson from the conference, I put an Ikon bumper sticker on my back of my Pathfinder. What can I say.
    In 2007, I sold more prints of The Ikon than any of my other images. It’s really quite nice to have an photograph that takes such good care of me. ]

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks: Chapter Two: "El Tiratido, Tucson, Arizona"

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks

Chapter Two: "El Tiradito, Tucson, Arizona" 
(c) 1996, 2004, 2008

    Michael had a bad motorcycle accident. It was a miracle he survived. The kick stand of a friend’s bike dropped down while Michael was test-driving it at 60 mph on a curvy road north of Oracle, Arizona. The kickstand suddenly embedded itself in the asphalt and he went airborne and corkscrewed himself, head first, into a road bank. Crushed a bunch of vertebrates. A long rehab followed but afterwards, Michael could still walk with a cane.
    Now, 23 years later, he’s in a wheelchair due to a slow growing cyst that is squeezing his spinal cord. He meditates to deal with the chronic pain, instead of using drugs. He’s a quiet gentle man with a very dry sense of humor and a deep spiritual side. He’s the best listener I know. He’s one of my best friends.
    We have just eaten dinner at El Mineto, a small Mexican restaurant near the Tucson Convention Center. As we leave, we go outside to visit El Tiradito, an old shrine, supposedly the only holy shrine in America dedicated to a sinner.
    The shrine sits in a vacant lot next door to the restaurant, consisting of the ruined remains of a house with only the back brick wall still standing. On this night, as on any night, many candles burn, and tokens, photographs, and gifts are laid on and around the back wall. So many candles have burned here over the decades that the old wax has made a large black sticky pad of the ground.
    There are many stories regarding how the shrine came to be, but I tend to believe the story a Yaqui Indian I used to work with, told me. Then again, he did have a habit of teaching me Spanish cuss words and then telling me they were polite greetings.
    The story goes that in the 1800’s, a young man fell in love with his wife’s mother. His father-in-law found out about the affair and killed him at this house. Since he was a sinner in the eyes of the church, for being in love (and probably having sex) with his mother-in-law, he couldn’t be buried in consecrated ground at the nearby Roman Catholic Church’s cemetery. Legend has it that he was buried under the front porch of this house. The house is mostly gone now as is the porch, but he is supposedly still here, presumably completely covered in melted wax by now. Many women of the community took pity on the young man’s soul, and came and prayed for him. It’s said it was quite a vigil and went on for years and years. (Sometime I wonder if the prayers of those women were simply ‘Please God, don’t have my own son-in-law fall in love with me.’)
    Then over time, men and women would come and pray at this site, not for the murdered lover, but for people that had become lost to them. Maybe they didn’t know where a loved one physically was, or that they were lost to an addiction and a darkness of some kind, or just lost because they were lost. No matter. They came and they prayed.
    Now, so many years later, people come and pray and bring tall votive candles with the saints printed on them, and small color photographs of those they love, and brightly red, yellow and green plastic flowers, and little tokens like car keys and Christian medals to the shrine. It is said that if you bring a candle and pray for something or someone, your prayer will come true if the candle burns all the way down. A gift that I and others do, is go to El Tiradito when we are in the area and relight the blown out candles. For me, it’s not because I’m a great guy. It’s simply that if I had a candle burning, I would want someone to relight my candle too.
    Michael and I were taking in El Tiradito, the wax, the candles, the blackened back wall, the little objects, when I brought up my upcoming plans to go back to art school and my doubts about doing it. I was working at the time as a substance abuse counselor at a prison, and to go to photography school would require that I give up my three day weekend (poor baby) and go to school on Saturday. I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to do both well, for the prison took a lot out of me, but then again, I really wanted to learn how to print black and white film onto black and white paper. (Up to that point I was shooting only color transparencies). I was hemming and hawing when Michael suddenly said,
    “It will change your life.”
    “Pardon me?” I said
    “It will change your life” Michael said again. The same five words.
    “It will change my life going and learning how to print?”
    “Yep.”
    “Wow, you usually aren’t that demonstrative, Michael.”
    “I know, but it will change your life.”
    I laughed.
    Michael and I have laughed often about that night in 1996. Prior to that night, an image of mine of El Tiradito had won a Blue Ribbon at the Pima County Fair, and I had been in a show or two. That’s about it since graduating from art school in 1979. Now, I have a great art representative; I had a one man show in the Spring, and I just got back from Atlanta, where they flew me out to do an art installation of alfalfa, Christmas lights, music and images for a conference on mythology. Taking that black and white photo printing class at Pima Community College in 1997 has, well, changed my life.

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks: Chapter One: "Owl's Head, Arizona"

    The 'Circle Stories' book has gone through many versions over the past four years. First it was just photos and sacred text from others. Then it was photos and my text, some sacred, some profane, most somewhere in the middle. The later book grew to be over 280 pages long, double spaced, with more than 80 photographs. It was long, but I figured an editor, agent or publishing house would cut it down by at least half. I would fine about that. I thought I had an agent when I started this project but that fell through unexpectedly. So I went to shipping the book to fine art photography publishers, from here in Tucson to New York City and places in between. The first rejection letters were kind of fun (To get anything on an Abrams letterhead is very cool), but the novelty soon wore off. I then tried some spiritual book publishers, having a connection or two in that field. They were as kind as the other houses, but they basically all said the same thing. What you are doing doesn't fit with what we do. The art photography publishers liked the images but didn't like the writing and stated that they didn't do photo books with this much text. And the New Age publishers really liked the writing but said that they didn't do books with this many photographs. Some of my friends talk about their writing and their art being 'interstitial', the Art Of The In-Between, neither fish nor fowl, with no obvious categorization. This is where I fell, I suppose, in my quest for a publisher. Granted, I'm a photographer and a visual artist, not a trained writer, but I didn't think the prose was so awful. And I've always wanted to read and see a photography book like 'Circle Stories' where the artist talked at length, about his personal experiences and his process, along with the images. And Chuck, a writer friend, I don't think was wrong when he suggested I do this book. 'Do something like Edward Abbey,' Chuck said. Well, I'm not as abrasive or as drunk as Abbey was, but I could write about my images and the emotions, thoughts and prayers I have while making them. So that what I've done. But frankly, the rejection letters began to get to me. I stopped sending the book out on cold calls, wondering if these really were that good of photographs after all, or maybe my writing just sucked. But you know me. I'm already in debt $20,000 trying to have an Art career. Why stop now? So I moved studios, got a Canon 30D and keep shooting and writing and playing the synthesizer and the mandolin. The words and pictures will be on my blog instead of in a book, for the time being. But the dream of The Book hasn't gone away. The dream has shrunk a bit, from one big coffee-table book to a series of little photos books instead, but the dream still whispers to me, mumbling "The Books, The Books", quietly in my ear, first thing in the morning. Not every morning but often.
    So little books it is.
    In the coming weeks and months, two little books about nocturnal photography will be published on this blog. Some of the images and stories you probably know, if you follow my work, but you'll notice that many of the images have changed in color, density and tone. Thank Photoshop CS2 for that. The vast majority of the images you will see were shot with a old Rollei medium format camera, using Ilford black and white film, printed initially on Ilford fiber-based gelatin silver paper or on Fuji Crystal Archive color paper. But for the past few years, I've been printing much of my work on my poor-man's Giclee printer, the Epson 2200, or having Photographic Works of Tucson print up the occasional monster prints for clients. And my camera of choice for the last year has been the Canon 30D. Some of the newer images were taken with the 30D. Again, expect some subtle changes in how the older images look and some not-so-subtle changes in my slash-and-burn editing of my stories (It's a good thing.) And the books you will see will be entitled "Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks" (how haute taute!) and "Hoop Dancing: More Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks" (or 'Stu Deux' if you are French). And by the way, if you are an agent or an art rep or someone directly connected with a publishing house, please feel free and contact me. My email is all over the web (stujenks at gmail dot com), and my snail mail address is on my website (www.stujenks.com). I still dream of holding a book in my hands and sharing it with others around the world.
    Hope you enjoy the stories and the images. The first story and image is "Owl's Head, Arizona." And many thanks to all my friends, clients and fans. You know who you are.

    Love, light and luck,

    Stu

Flame Spirals: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks

Chapter One: "Owl's Head, Arizona"
(c) 2000, 2008

    The Tortillitas are an unassuming mountain range northwest of Tucson. Cradling Tucson due north are the Catalina Mountains, raising up to eight thousand plus feet, impressing all the tourists who fly over them. To the east of Tucson are the Rincons, quite tall too, but with no roads and only a few foot trails. To the west are the Tucson Mountains, thick with saguaros and palo verde trees, and tourists in their rental cars going to The Desert Museum. The Tortillitas have neither tourists, nor spectacular views, but they do have many statuesque saguaros, a good number of stately ocotillos, and the ever-ubiquitous prickly pear cactus. Add to that, a few grazing cows, still fewer slow tortoises, and numberless fast lizards. And if you are lucky and respectful, you may see a pack of roving javelinas, and a strolling coyote or two. And overhead, during the day, a disinterested raven may say your name, and a soaring red tail hawk may circle you, on his way to finding a slow mouse. And if, at night, you stand very still, you may hear a great horned owl cut the air with her stout wings, as she hunts for a midnight meal.
    The Torts are thick with hunters a couple times a year, bow hunters mostly, tracking javelinas, but it’s not hunting season now. On some nights, young lovers from small nearby ranch towns come to make out in the hills. Judging from the decrease in the number of discarded beer cans and condoms over the past few years, I’m guessing the teenagers have found a new place to go to have sex and drink. I have kissed a pretty girl here myself, a while ago, but mostly I come out here by myself.
    This night I drive out with the waxing Almost-Full-Moon just rising above the Catalinas to the east. The windmill was hard to find but I did eventually see the silhouette of its blades. I turned onto the dirt track, engaged the four wheel drive and slowly drove through the palo verde and mesquite trees. It’s summer frog season and some toads are jumping away from my tires and headlights as I cross the washes. Some nights the gleaming eyes of javelinas glow in my high beams. Not tonight. Just hopping frogs.
    Owl’s Head is a prominent rock peak in the Tortillitas. Nothing really special to most, but very special to me. Looking like a thick thumb pushing through the ridgeline, Owl’s Head has yet to look like an owl’s head to me. No matter, it’s still a fine peak. I drive up and down the dirt track, in and out of washes, through the trees that hug the track. The saguaros are so close to the road you can see details of the saguaro shoes where woodpeckers live, even in the dim moonlight. Just a bit more driving and now, I’m parking my four by four in a spot that I’ve often come to, a sacred place I share with the animals, the trees and the bow hunters.  It's so quiet I can hear the blood pumping through my veins. Ten miles to the west, a freight train blows its whistle. Two longs, a short and a long. The full moon is higher now but Owl's Head is still pretty much in full shadow.
    A small fire pit has been dug by me, for the cooler winter nights, but I built no campfire tonight. A hill to the north has prayer tokens and sacred objects among the rocks. Just a ways from the fire circle, I dig a spiral in the ground, using a stick, a nice flat piece of ground surrounded by prickly pear and mesquite. It doesn’t take too long to carve. I pour Coleman White Fuel into the trough of the earth spiral. I’m going to try a little experiment, something I’ve never tried before. The idea is to light the fuel, let it burn down a bit and shoot it with the flames gently lapping on the ground. Now I know that white fuel is very volatile but I have my fire extinguisher close by just in case. It’ll be fine.
    I strike a wooden match from a safe distance and I lazily toss it onto the Coleman-soaked ground spiral.
    FAA-TOS-SHEE-YA-YAA!!!
    I swear to God the white gas explodes with a sound that has at least five syllables. Flames rise fast and hard to about seven feet high and they don’t look like there’re going to burn down any time soon. Shit! I grabbed the extinguisher and just hold it in my hands. I’m ready. Oh crap! The Coleman fuel is not burning way. I can see the headlines now. “LOCAL ARTIST ADMITS HE IS THE CAUSE OF THE OWL’S HEAD FIRE”. The accompanying article would say something like ‘Stu Jenks, a local Tucson artist and photographer, turned himself into the Pinal County Sheriff Department yesterday, admitted that he accidentally started the Owl’s Head Fire. The Owl’s Head Fire has to date consumed 100,000 acres of virtually virgin desert land and is threatening nearby ranches. Many head of cattle are presumed dead. The smoke can be seen as far away as Phoenix, etc., etc., etc.’
    After what seems like five minutes, the flames finally die down to a gentle roar and then begin to flutter out. I did take a couple of exposures with my Rollei with the flames high, with my extinguisher close at hand. After a few more minutes, I touched the ground. It’s still hot. Damn. I use some water that I have in my Pathfinder to cool things down, splashing it softly on the spiral. As an interesting by-product, the water softens the ground spiral very nicely. Hmm. Maybe one of my flame spirals will be nice here instead. A hell of a lot safer I can tell you that.
    My old Rollei’s still on its tripod, no worse for wear from the hot fire and the dense black smoke. My Zippo lighter is in my pocket. I again open the shutter of the medium format camera. I light-paint a spiral with my Zippo above the spiral on the ground, then I leave the frame of view, and walk behind my camera. Fifteen minutes or so will pass before I close the shutter. Some nights I dance to music playing from my Pathfinder’s CD player or I pray and meditate in silence or I read a book or walk around or simply just sit. This night I go for a bit of a walk down the dirt track, listening to trains and the sound of my own blood, now pumping a bit louder, due to The Coleman Fuel Experiment. I’m thankful I haven’t set the desert on fire and hopeful that I have created a bit of a mystery on film.
    Fifteen minutes later I close the shutter. I advance the film and then take a few more exposures, painting a few more flame spirals south of Owl’s Head and call it a night.  I pack up my gear and drive back down the single track, trying my best to miss the frogs. And one thing I know for sure: I’m not going to screw around with Coleman Fuel anymore.
    The next day, after a cursory look at the developed negatives, I can tell immediately that I have a couple of good exposures. I won't know for sure until I have the proof sheets done, but it looks very good. I again look through the loupe at the flame spirals on the negs. I think I got a winner here. I pump my fist slightly and say a quiet and succinct ‘Yes!'. I also look at the Coleman Fuel Spiral negs, almost completely black from being so overexposed. I smile and slowly shake my head.
    [Note to the authorities: The Coleman Fuel Experiment was tried almost eight years ago and hasn’t been tried since. No need to worry. I’m just out in the desert and in the forests with my Zippo and my battery-powered Christmas lights, hiking in the sunshine or strolling in the moonlight, taking pictures. Again, no need to worry. Really. I’m being careful. Usually.]

"The Mustang High Grass Spiral" (c) 2008

"The Mustang High Grass Spiral, Mustang Mountains, Arizona" (c) 2008 Stu Jenks

       MLK Night. I walked in the tall grass at sunset, playing a poor version of "We Shall Overcome", but I didn't judge myself too harshly for the finger faults. Neither would have Dr. King. I had carved the dirt spiral in the ant-flat a hour earlier. I came back, packed up the mando and set up the shots. First shots, not so good. I then moved the camera and shoot directly into the rising Full Moon with a bit of dusk-light still left in the sky. Never had done that before but I kind of liked what I saw and what I shot. Waited another hour and then shot some flame spirals but they didn't make the grade. Wasn't a flame spiral night. Frankly, I may not use the Zippo again. Felt like I was taking a big step backwards.

       Then this morning, I thought about the portable battery-powered Christmas lights I carry in my 30D bag, and wondered what a slow dance with them around this spiral in the high grass would look like. It looks awfully good in my mind's eye. I do a little test dance in my kitchen with my Christmas-Lights-On-A-String. Looks good here. The Mustangs Mountain are an hour and a half away. Hmm. I hope the storm that's coming up from Mexico takes its time.

       The Mexican clouds did roll in, but it didn't really matter. The shot I got the night before was just fine. I did shoot with the Christmas lights but it was clunky and ill-timed. And this afternoon ended up being about Forgiveness and not about Photography.

       While hiking today, up a canyon that was new to me, I started speaking to God. I do that sometimes. It helps me release feelings and gain insights. Old saying: If I live only with my feelings and have no spirituality, I'm ruled by my emotions and I have no perspective. If I live through Spirit alone, without feeling my emotions, I'm stuck, arrogant, and in denial. But when I live in that middle place between God and Passion, I have them both, and I feel balanced, centered, generous and hopeful. That's what happened today in that side canyon. I expressed forgiveness to a musician friend who inexplicably axed me from his life a few years back. I felt forgiveness for a long ago lover, who was sweet and kind, but who wasn't in love with me even though I wish she had been. And I gave myself a break, letting go of some judgments about my mismanagement of money, about my inability to age gracefully, and about some of my shortcomings when dealing with family. When I got to the dirt spiral just before sunset, I realized that what I needed from the Mustangs had already been given to me. No photographs were needed. Again, I did shoot some nocturnal images, but it wasn't the night for circles of Christmas lights over a dirt spiral. It was a day about letting go and forgiveness. But I did play "Cut The Tent" on my mandolin in the stunning purple dusk, and I did call a friend on my new cellphone to tell her how beautiful it was in the Mustangs. And I did leave smiling with a cloud-fuzzy Full Moon rising in the eastern sky. 

"The Biscuit Swirl" (c) 2008

"The Biscuit Swirl, Mustang Mountains, Arizona" (c) 2008 Stu Jenks

[Part of the ongoing Time Travel series. Fun Fact: Everything is done in-camera, using long exposures, zooming-out of the lenses and wrist-cranking the camera. Only PhotoShopping that is done, is for enhancing the color and popping the contrast.]

"Jack the Cat" (c) 2008

"Jack the Cat of Courtney Road, Lancaster County, Virginia" (c) 2008 Stu Jenks

"Mary Elton" (c) 2008

"Mary Elton, Mollusk, Virginia" (c) 2008 Stu Jenks

[The top image of my mother Mary on Christmas Morning. The middle image is of my mother speaking in her kitchen. The bottom image is a self-portrait on the banks of the Rappahannock, a few hundred yards, across fallow fields, from my mother's little house in Mollusk.]

"Pert, The Pointer" (c) 2008

"Pert, the Pointer" (c) 2008 LanChien Tallent

[John Tallent was one of the best bakers in Chapel Hill in the 1970's. He now lives in Chatham County, North Carolina. This is his prize pointer, Pert. She is four years old. John says that since bird dogs are better at finding birds than we are, AND that they know it, that this gives them a certain dignity. Pert has this in spades. And since I've just returned of late, from a visit to my ancestral South, it seems right to put a very good bird dog on my blog. The photo was taken by John's wife, LanChien. Good dog.]

"Lincoln in Time" (c) 2008

"Lincoln in Time, Washington, D.C." © 2008 Stu Jenks

Mom and I may have just seen the name of a distant cousin of mine, on the walls of the Vietnam War Memorial. She's not really sure. She says she'll check. I choked anyway, for a relative I never knew, taking a picture of James J. Jenks Jr.'s etched name in the reflective black marble. Mom seemed somewhat unimpressed with The Wall. You have to understand. She grew up with the Jefferson, Washington and Lincoln Memorials with all their size and grandeur. (Literally, she grew up with them, having been born and raised just across the Potomac in Alexandria, Virginia.) A black gash in the earth she doesn't quite get, being Old School as she is. But I'm a baby boomer, a man who publicly protested the Vietnam War when I was a kid and who pretty much hates all stupid wars, Vietnam being on top of the list with The Civil War being a close second and The War on Terror, a not too distant third. I get The Wall. But no judgment toward Mom. She is who she is, born of a generation that loves the large visual stroke, not so much the subtle symbolic gesture.

We leave The Wall and walk the short distance to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

"I'm going to go up and take a few pictures of Abe. You be alright here for a few minutes?" I ask.

"I'm fine. Go ahead," says Mary.

"You don't want to come, do you?" thinking Mom's having a hard time just navigating the curbs much less the tall steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

"No. No. I'm fine."

The sun's an hour from going down. It's clear and crisp this Christmas week in D.C., but not too cold. Canada geese fly overhead. I climb the stairs to where the large sculpture of the Seated Lincoln resides. People are everywhere, and they seem to be folk from many lands. I hear French, German, Japanese, Australian English and what sounds like a Middle Eastern language. Everyone and their mother's son are taking pictures of their families at the feet of Lincoln. It is a cluster fuck, but a pleasant one, a happy frenzy. I then walk to the southern part of the monument where the Gettysburg Address is carved large in the walls. Hardly anyone is here. Just one or two of us. I find the shot and take it. I then take it twice and three times. I want this shot, more that I wanted The Wall shot. The word 'Devotion' has struck me this time, etched in a very large, very beautiful font. I back away from the wall and take a few minutes to just be with the words. All the words.

I quietly thank Abe for all he did, as I leave, and head down the marble steps to Mom. She's just where I left her.

"Ready, Mom?"

"Yes, I am."

"Having fun while I was gone?"

"I was starting to get cold. That bench is icy cold."

I smile. "Well, let's head back to the truck."

"OK."

Mom doesn't move too fast these days and it helps her to take my arm as we walk. It feels nice to have Mary on my arm. Being the good son and all. As we slowly stroll, Mom tells me a story from her childhood.

"When I was a teenager, we used to take the bus over from Alexandria on Saturdays. You know we didn't like Lincoln too much. So my friends and I would climb up into Abe's lap and shake our fingers at him, saying 'Shame on you, Abe. Shame.' We were the only ones here. Just my friends and I." She pauses. "No, son, this isn't my favorite Memorial."

"Which one is your favorite?"

"I'm quite fond of the Jefferson Memorial myself," she says with a little smile on her face.

As we walk I think of when my mother was a kid. It was the 1930's. Washington, D.C. was a small town then. Truly. It wasn't until World War Two that D.C. became a city. And my mother isn't exaggerating. She and her girlfriends were here by themselves. Just some Southern girls who didn't like the man who started the War of Northern Aggression. Mom clutches my arm as we slowly walk to the truck. I smile as we walk.

Mary Elton Saum is a Daughter of Virginia. Always has been. Always will be. And will continue to be, after she's dead and buried. It's a good thing.

"Picasso's The Lovers" (c) 2008

"The Lovers, National Gallery, Washington, D.C." [detail] (c) Pablo Picasso; Photo by Stu Jenks 2008

"Gladstone & Florence Mothershead" (c) 2008

"Gladstone & Florence Mothershead, Mothershead Neck, Virginia" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

[So many stories to tell. Florence's butter beans. Gladstone's jokes. Their deep and loyal love for each other, and for my family, through good times and bad. Gladstone and Florence, by the way, live on the banks of the Rappahannock, on land that has been in their family for generations. Mom and I had lunch with them soon after Christmas last year. (Our luncheon with the Mothersheads was reported in January 2nd, 2008 edition of the Northern Neck News. I kid you not.) The ham and roast beef were tender and tasty. Our conversation was filled with laughter and with talk of God. The greens were as soft and as salty as the incoming tide. And those butter beans. Joseph Campbell once said that some things are so spiritual, so God-full, that it's useless to try and describe them. Florence's butter beans are like that.
    Gladstone got a new dog recently. He was found on the side of the road. I can't remember the boy's name but I do recall that he didn't like my camera very much. But the camera loves Florence and Gladstone. And I love them too.]

"Black Santa" (c) 2007, 2008

"Black Santa, Peyton Street, Alexandria, Virginia" (c) 2007, 2008 Stu Jenks

[My mother Mary's father built a house on Peyton, a modest two-story with a garret. Mom lived in the attic as a child. The neighborhood has gone from good to bad to good again in the past 70 years. The old Saum place is just up the street from Black Santa. I covet Black Santa. Thank you, Jesus, (or Canon), for making digital imagery so I can take a piece of Black Santa home with me. But alas this JPEG is flat. Black Santa, in reality, is round, three-dimensional and jolly. And he glows in the dark.]

"For The Love of Wally" (c) 2007, 2008

"For The Love of Wally" (c) 2007, 2008 Stu Jenks

[Another Time Travel shot, this one in memory of William Wallace Gordon, cat.]

"Belle Isle, Virginia: The Lone Tree" (c) 2008

"Belle Isle, Virginia: The Lone Tree" (c) 2008 Stu Jenks

[Part of the ongoing Time Travel Series]

"Historyland Highway" (c) 2008

"Historyland Highway, Lancaster County, Virginia" (c) 2008 Stu Jenks

[Part of the ongoing Time Travel Series]

"Poi Above" (c) 2007, 2008

"Poi Above: Flam Chen in Bisbee, Arizona on New Year's Eve" (c) 2007, 2008 Flam Chen & Stu Jenks

["Mothra, O Mothra. If we were to call for help, with your mother's might, over time, answer our prayers"]

"Solstice Rock, Arizona" (c) 1998

"Solstice Rock, Arizona" (c) 1998 Stu Jenks


    December 21st , 1998; The day of the Winter Solstice.

    I’ve just past Windy Point and it’s beginning to snow. Oh boy oh boy. I’m leaning a little forward in my seat in my old King Cab, looking out the windshield at the flurries, as I continue to climb the winding two land road up Mt. Lemmon. My heart rate has increased just a bit. I can feel it. I light a smoke.
    My truck is not good in snow. No weight in the back. A 2 x 4. Just a couple years ago, when I was coming up here to pray at Solstice Rock, I had to turn around for I was slipping and sliding so much. I ended up praying north of Prison Camp instead. But today, it’s just starting to snow, not much on the road yet and if it does snow a lot while I’m up here, I pretty sure I can get down. Pretty sure. And I’ve only got another few miles to go to Solstice Rock, anyway. I can hopefully make it.
    After a couple of miles, I reach the pull-off near Solstice Rock. It’s