« April 2008 | Main | June 2008 »
[Many thanks to Lance Keimig, and others, for organizing the "Darkness, Darkness" show, at the Three Columns Gallery at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Oh, yea. He took this nice snapshot of my "In A Secret Place" photograph, and hung it on the wall too. You are a very good man, Lance.
Look for the 'Darkness, Darkness' show going on the road soon. Maybe it'll come to a town near you.]
Hoop Dancing: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks:
Chapter Four: "Hoop Dance #2 [Ode to The Toole Shed Darkroom] © 2002, 2008
I blow the negative with a blast of canned air. The negative carrier rests on a small light table. I bend over with my loupe and look for dust. Damn. Still a couple of pieces of lint. I blow the negative carrier again with air, doing my best to rid it of all dust. It'll be a white spot on the finished print if I don’t get rid of it now. And I really hate spotting prints. Unless you are really good at it, you can still tell when you’ve spotted a final print with a bit of colored ink. I look again through my loupe at the negative. I think I got it all now. I hope. I'll find out once I do a test print or two.
I place the carrier holding the neg in the color enlarger, between the lamp and the focusing lens. I gently pull down the lamp housing to secure the carrier. I've already set up my easel to print a 7 x 7 inch image on 8 x 10 inch paper. Now I just need to focus it in. I turn on the enlarger lamp and crank the enlarger head up and down to get a rough size of the image and then I bend down close to the easel with my focusing mirror, reaching high above my head to the fine focusing knob on the enlarger. No filters right now. F stop wide open for focusing. Back and forth, between almost sharp and spot on sharp, looking for the grain to pop in the mirror. Pop. There it is.
I stop the enlarger down to F 16, very gently turning the aperture, so as not to move the enlarger very much. This is a very old Omega color head enlarger and it doesn't like to be bumped. Very delicate, this old machine. It already has a threaded bar that runs from the frame through the old sheet rock wall to the north. This jury-rigging is there to add stability and hopefully keep it level. And when a train goes by, just a few feet north of the darkroom, the whole room shakes, enlarger included. I've often thought it would be fun to make prints as the trains go by, just to see how wonderfully fuzzy these images would be. The whole of the Toole Shed borders the tracks.
I'm in the Toole Shed Darkroom, here in the Toole Shed, in the Historic Warehouse District of Downtown Tucson. Doesn't that sound quaint? Well, it’s not really. Across the street is Pleasure World, a video porno store that fronts a male prostitution business. Perhaps the only pornography store in America that shares a common wall with a courthouse, in this case, the Tucson City Court. The courthouse parking lot is where most of the nighttime prostitution business is transacted, if that's the right word. Howard and other Toole Shed residents have called the police on many occasions but they don't seem interested. Makes Howard mad as a hornet. I don’t blame him.
Speaking of Howard, it's through his generosity that I'm printing tonight, and other nights too. Maybe a little history about the Toole Shed and the Warehouse District is in order.
Back in the early 1980's, The City of Tucson (The City) and the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) decided to widen and improve the Aviation Parkway, a relatively unused East-West thoroughfare that runs parallel to the Southern Pacific railroad tracks, east of downtown. A city bond came up on the ballot and the people of Tucson voted for The City to have the money for that construction. Then, the City and ADOT decided that since now that the Aviation Parkway was going to be so wide and nice and would perhaps soon relieve some of Tucson's traffic congestion, it made sense to connect it to Interstate 10 that runs just west of Downtown. About a mile separates the Interstate from the west end of Aviation Parkway. Only problem was how to get the roads together. The City and ADOT came up with another bond issue to get the money to make The Last Mile. They were confident that it would pass, since the first bond passes. In preparation, ADOT bought all of the land between the Aviation Parkway and I-10, except the Tucson Electric Power (TEP) building, a large eight-story office structure. They'd worry about TEP later. On the land they purchased were a series of old decaying warehouses. Legend has it that they were owned by a number of prominent Tucsonans and that ADOT paid way over market value for them. I believe it's called a Sweetheart Deal. Rank has its privilege I suppose. Or its corruption. Anyway, ADOT bought the land and the old buildings and the bond came and it went down hard to defeat. The people spoke and said ‘No’ to The Last Mile. Now, The City had egg on its face and ADOT was stuck with old rundown buildings it paid too much money for. But the City and ADOT held onto some hope that, in the future, another bond would pass to pay for the road and for construction. It's now the year 2002 and we still don't have the Last Mile. A spiffier Aviation Parkway but no Last Mile. But it ended up being good for us artists. Here’s how.
ADOT was stuck with these buildings but they couldn't do anything will them for they were slated for demolition, but the road never came, and the warehouses just went fallow. The homeless began to reside in them for that was apparently their only good use. Then some artists contacted ADOT in the late 1980's and said that they would love to use the warehouses for art studios. We'll put in all the sweat equity, they said. And we'll clean and fix them up, and pay you a little rent too, the artists told ADOT. And they won't be such an eye sore, and you'd be helping the artists of Tucson have affordable studio space, the artists continued. ADOT agreed. Howard, Howard's wife Magdalena, Issac, and a number of other people went into the warehouse on the corner of Toole and 6th and began the long process of making it livable and workable. They worked very hard and very long to get this done. They named the building The Toole Shed, after the avenue outside and the tools inside. They have been on a month-to-month lease for over a dozen years now. ADOT fixed the roof this year but not until much asking, pleading and prodding. The rent’s paid (mostly),. and ADOT is reasonably happy in the ‘No news is good news’ concept. And Isaac, Magdalena, Howard and the rest of the residents and artist do repairs and maintenance as they come up.
The Toole Shed has some legends attached to it as well. Perhaps true, perhaps myth, perhaps a little bit of both. It’s said that Air America, the CIA-run airline that sent goods and arms through Laos during the Vietnam War, ran shipments through the Toole Shed on their way out of the country. It is also said that during Prohibition, that there was a speakeasy in the basement of the Toole Shed, where porno films were shown and bathtub liquor was served. The Shriners, at one time, even stored their sequined costumes in the Toole Shed basement.
Now, The Toole shed is home of over fifteen art studios, a darkroom and most recently, Tucson’s Museum of Contemporary Art, a project of Howard’s and other patrons and artists in town.
The darkroom was a creation of Howard and Magdalena’s hard work. Story goes that Mags built the sinks for Howard as a birthday present, and then Howard assembled the counters, scrounged the cabinets, and found the enlarger. The color paper processor, it's said, was brought by somebody and then just left there, or something like that. Stories in the Toole Shed do one of two things: They get bigger and more elaborate with each telling, so a story of a mouse becomes a story of a moose, or they shrink and become very small, so a story of a art couple drinking, fighting and fucking all the time in one of the studio, just fades away after they are no longer tenants. Anyway, the darkroom is huge for a darkroom, probably a couple hundred square feet, a trapezoidal shaped room with a high ceiling and plenty of room of dancing and moving around. Howard is a tall thin man who prints color photos that are 30 x 36 inches. Great big prints of hazardous materials and other mysteriously beautiful things. Great prints, from a great big Rock and Roll darkroom.
This night, Steve Roach's "Lost Pieces" are playing on the boom box in the darkroom as I focus the enlarger. I'm printing color tonight. The ratty old Hope color processor is clunking away on the other side of the room. It is old, but it does just fine. Most times, that is. It has no replenisher reservoir, which is a bit of a drag, for the chemicals become old in about four days, but you can still do quite a bit of printing in four days. I'm printing black and white negatives on to Fuji Crystal Archive Color Paper. 11 by 14s and a few 16 x 20s. Good sizes. The red light overhead isn't on, in the darkroom, like in black and white paper printing though. With color paper, you print in complete darkness.
I turn out all the lights, and take out an 8 x 10-inch piece of paper from the Fuji Box, and by touch, place it in the easel below the enlarger. I’m making a test strip first, to get my exposure times for the final prints. I check to make sure the Fuji box is closed, to ward against light leaking on the paper and accidentally trashing it. I reach toward the timer to my left that has been set for two second intervals of exposure light. With my right hand, I find an 8 x 10 piece of cardboard and place it over 4/5 of the paper that is to be exposed. I hit the timer with my left forefinger. Two seconds of F 16 light falls on the easel and the paper. I move the cardboard off the easel about a 1/5, an inch and a half or so, and hit the timer again. Two more seconds. Back off another 1/5. Hit the timer. Two seconds more. Back off the cardboard another 1/5 of the length of the paper. Hit the timer switch again. Two seconds of "Hoop Dance #2" falls on the Fuji paper. Now I take the cardboard completed away from the easel. Hit the timer one last time. Last two seconds of enlarger light. The afterglow of the enlarger lamp fades to black. Dark. Total darkness now.
I lift the top of the easel and take out the 8 x 10 inch piece of paper and I walk in the complete darkness to the Hope color processor 15 feet away. There is a tiny piece of fluorescent tape on the processor to guide me, but it's pretty much old hat to me now. I've walked back and forth in the dark, a lot in this darkroom. Like a blind person, my body remembers how many steps it is to the processor, where the handle to the lid is, how to get back to the enlarger, etc. Half the fun is the process of making these prints. Making magic in the dark. And part of the magic is working in the full darkness.
I place the Fuji Crystal Archive Paper in the slot that feeds the paper through the processor, close the lid, and walk in the dark to the light switch on the other side of the room. I turn it on, and it is instantly big time bright. I squint a little. I have seven minutes to wait until the print comes out of the other end of the processor. I light a smoke and sway to Steve’s electronically manipulated drums and think back to that night nears Owl's Head when I shot the “Hoop Dance #2”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not much Moon to speak of. A Half Moon sliver to the east, obscured in cloud. I wonder if this'll work. There is still some dusk light to the west, but it’ll be gone soon.
The massive rock protrusions of Owl’s Head are a bit farther to the south than usual. I'm not at my regular Sacred Place, with its shallow fire pit, quaint rock seats and emotionally familiar ground. I'm north at a relatively unknown wash to me. But I need a wash with trees to do what I’m thinking of doing.
My Pathfinder is parked partly in the desert, with just enough room for a another vehicle to pass, on this one lane 4 x 4 dirt path in the Tortillita Mountains. I don't think I need to worry about company. I've been coming out here at night, for a good while now and haven only seen one car at night in all those years. But famous last words, I park my truck in the road and sure enough someone will come. And I really need the truck to stay in one place for most of the evening.
I pop the hatchback and pull out the hula-hoop, the power converter and a hell of a lot of extension cord. I go inside of the cab and connect the converter to the cigarette lighter and look for the power light on the unit to glow ‘on’. Good. I go and get three big rolls of drop cords. One by One, I unloop the cords, and plug the first cord into the converter and slowly walking down the hill to the wash, connecting the second and third cords as I go. I continue through the wash and walk behind some small Mesquite trees to the estimated furthest distance I'll go with the hula-hoop tonight. It'll be easier to pull cord back to the truck then to pull the cord away from it.
I start up the truck and let it idle. I grab the hula-hoop with its 100 tightly wrapped Christmas lights and walk through the wash to the end of the extension cord. I plug in the hoop.
The wash explodes with light, even in the waning dusk.
"Wow!" I say, “I think this’ll be plenty of light.”
The Rollei is already on its tripod on a nearby hill, with depth of field calculated, the focus 2/3’s out, and the f-stop at F 5.6. It's good to go. Now the hoop and cords are ready. Just need to wait a few more minutes for it to get just a little bit darker but not full black.
Ten minutes pass.
"Ok. Let's do it."
God, let me know when I need to close the shutter for this is an almost moonless shoot. Help me to close the shutter after the right amount of time. Where am I? I’m Here. What time is it? It’s Now.
I walk up the hill to my Rollei and check to see if the lit hoop is out of the frame. Yep, sure is. I open the shutter and walk back down into the wash. Grabbing the hula-hoop, I swing it from left to right, back and forth, pulling the extension cord with my right hand as I dance through the wash. I hit a tree with the hoop.
"God damn it," I say.
I pull the cords and the hoop back out of the frame to the left. I walk up the hill, close the shutter, advance the film, check again to see if the hoop is out of frame, and I then open the shutter again.
“Slow, Stu,” I say, “Dance with it. Dance.”
I dance again through the wash, swinging the hoop, high and low. This time I miss the tree. It feels good, this dance. I drop the hoop far to the right and go up to my truck to check on the time. There’s some glow still to the west from the long-setted Sun and some glow to the south from the distant city lights of Tucson. Hmm. 10 minutes should do. I turn on Elvis Costello's new CD on my truck’s player. I wait and sing along. After ten minutes, I go to my camera and close the shutter. Looking at the sky, there’s only the faint glow of the Tucson lights to the south. No light to speak of from the west and the Moon is still playing hide and seek in the clouds. Hell, let's do it anyway. I reposition the hoop to the East, open the shutter and dance again. I love the dancing part. I love making big light curves. I place the hoop on the ground again, outside of the frame, and head to the truck again. No tunes this time. I check the time and go for a walk up the road away from the wash. Twenty minute exposure this time.
Beautiful night. No rain lately. But plenty of cool air in the washes. Just lovely.
I turn around wondering if I can see the lit hula hoop. A hundred yards away or so, I spy the hoop glowing through the Palo Verde and the Mesquite trees, looking like something from another time and place, creating a wondrously magical light that is both alien and familiar. Pity. Would be a nothing photograph from this distance, unless I had a very long lens (which I don’t.) But it's a Big-Time-Somethin’ experience, right here. Right now.
I'm struck, tonight, by my own work and my process. That rarely happens, that I get reflective during a shoot, for I'm mostly focused on the getting the shot and not messing up. But from this distance, I'm feel more detached from the work, yet more connected to that hula-hoop of light. A paradox.
A friend long ago, once said, that when you find two seemingly contradictory yet absolutely complete Truths, look for the paradox that resides in between them, for there you will find an even greater and larger Truth.
Looking at the hoop in the distance, I sense that larger Truth. Fleeting yet permanent. Solid yet fluid. Hard but soft. Real but otherworldly. Truth yet an illusion.
Hmm. Would make a good vision statement for the next Biennial, wouldn’t it? I crack a little smile. Don’t get too deep, now, Stu. Just get the shot.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The 8 x 10 Fuji Crystal Archive Paper flops into the exit tray of the processor. Looking at the test strip, I like the brown color and it appears that seven seconds of light from the enlarger is about right for a 8 x 10. I turn out the light, load the easel again with a fresh piece of paper, expose it and walk to the processor once more. I get off course and hit a stool hard, with my right big toe.
"Ouch" I yell. Well, that hurt.
I hobble to the Hope Processor and load the print into it. I limp back to the enlarger and expose another seven-second print, just for good measure. Darkness again. Missing the stool this time. Feeding the Hope. Turning on the light.
Seven minutes later, both prints are out. they seem a bit too dark I'll expose at 6.6 seconds next time. Also, they seems a little boring, with just the simple sepia color. Then I have an idea. I'm sure I'm not the first to think this (I’m not by a long shot), but I'm wondering what would happen if I burned in the sky of this black and white negative onto color paper? What color would it make? What if I use no filters during the burn? Just a straight white light burn?
I try out my idea. After the 6.6 second initial exposure, I feather in the sky with a piece of cardboard, obscuring most of the bottom piece of the paper in shadow but allowing another 6.6 second of light to burn in the sky. After burning, printing and processing, I see the result.
The sky becomes a reddish orange, giving the illusion of the colors of sunset, yet the lines of the hoop dancing are still fine, bright and sharp. And the wash keeps its rich sepia color. This is good. Very good. I repeat the printing process a number of times, making six 8x10 Fuji prints.
It's going well in the darkroom tonight. I’m grateful to that. Some nights, it seems the darkroom fairies wreck havoc. Some nights, the dust never gets off the negative, or I make silly beginner's mistakes or I can never dial in the exposure times or the colors correctly. But tonight, my print burning and dodging is reasonable, and my guesses on exposures are close if not right on the first time. Six good prints. Happy, Happy. Now let's pull out the 16 x 20 inch paper and go for the gold.
But first, I think I'll walk next door and get a soda out of the Toole Shed soda machine. The Hope Processor clunks away. I'm shirtless in shorts and it's after midnight on a Friday night. I leave the darkroom and walk down the hall to the front door of the East End of the Toole Shed. I open the never-locked painted plate glass door and then unlock the always-locked yellow steel-bar door. I relock the door and turning, I notice that Pleasure World and the parking lot of City Court are hopping. It is a Friday night. Lots of cars. A number of transvestites walk from car to car. No biggie to me. I'm mostly thinking about Hoop Dance #2, the big print I'm about to attempt. Will the processor will hold up? Will I need to rewash the big prints, for sometimes old rubber processor crud gets on the prints? Should I set up a couple of separate wash trays? Will the darkroom fairies be kind? I hear whistling from the parking lot across the street. I pay it no mind, thinking about F-stops, timers, and trays of water. I unlock the door to the main Toole Shed, go inside and get a soda from the machine. Exiting the main section and locking it back up, I hear whistling again and then I heard someone yell.
"Hey sweetie. You're cute," I hear a masculine-feminine voice say.
I look over at the parking lot across the way and seeing two women or rather men, looking at me. Suddenly I realize the whistling a few minutes before was for my benefit. I look away and continuing toward my door, very aware of the eyes of hungry men on me. I'm OK with women checking me out (which is almost never), but having He-Shes giving me the up and down is giving me a bit of the willies. I bet this is how women feel sometimes.
"He is cute!" I hear another voice say, from across the street.
I say nothing. As I unlock the East End door, I become aware of my clothes or rather lack there of. All I have on is a pair of tattered blue jean shorts, old jogging shoes, and no shirt. I smile. No wonder I'm getting catcalls from Pleasure World on a Friday night.
"I love this town," I say with a smile, and then quickly forget about the prostitutes and the transvestites from across the way. My mind shifts to thinking about all of that virgin 16 x 20 inch Fuji paper in the big box, and my hopes that I’ll get a good print or two, tonight.
[Final Note: The above description of printing in a color, chemical darkroom is from 2002, as was the account of my hoop dancing at Owl’s Head. Hoop Dance #2 was my one and only image that used converter-powered Christmas lights. All of my other Hoop Dances were done with battery-powered lights on the hoops. ("Spiritual Being" is the one exception yet that wasn't a hoop dance, per se.) And sadly, the Toole Shed Darkroom lays fallow now. Howard and Magdalena moved to Los Angeles. She works at a museum there and he’s gone back to school to be able to teach high school Art. And Isaac moved to New York City to find his fame and fortune. Between 2002 and 2008, I was fortunate to have a show at the MOCA gallery at the West End of The Toole Shed and even rented a small studio in the basement. Met some great other artists at the Toole Shed too. Also met the Art Administrator who took over for Howard after he left. Let’s just say she had a different vision statement for the Toole Shed than Howard did. His was ‘Tools and Art Space for Artists to Use and Share.’ Hers was more on the line of “Contemporary Artists: First, foremost, and only, at MOCA and the Toole Shed. Modernists need not apply.” In 2006, I saw the handwriting on the wall, and moved my studio to The BR-549 Studios, just across the railroad tracks. Now you may be saying, ‘Stu, you’re a Contemporary Artist. Why wouldn’t the new administration wish for you to stay and prosper at the Toole Shed?’ Well, friends and neighbors, I don’t really fall into the category of the Contemporaries, I’m afraid, even though I think I could easily belong, if they would make the tent bigger. The Neo-Comps are mostly about Big Ideas, mostly dark and ugly ideas, mostly about the Personal, with little emphasis on the Universal. And they seem to see the Visual as an inconvenience in order to get their point across. Plus their craftsmanship truly sucks. Me? I fall into what a group of Ex-Toole Shedders call ‘The New Beauticians’: Someone who reveres Truth and Beauty and Mystery, who looks for the Universal beyond the Personal, who loves craftsmanship and a good story, and who sees Visual Art as something to see and feel. Over at BR-549, I’m around those kind of folk: Master woodworkers, inventive ceramists, champion weavers, colorful painters, classic jewelers, and award winning linoleum block printers.
Where Pleasure World once was, is now where MOCA has its offices. The MOCA gallery has been condemned, and I hear The Toole Shed has half the tenants that it once had, during its heyday. And they have finally approved The Last Mile, and the money, they say, will be there in 2012. We’ll see.
But I miss the Toole Shed darkroom, the people, and the camaraderie I had there years ago. And I’ll be forever grateful to Howard, for his vision, his generosity, his wit, and his big helping hand at the start of this bizarre thing I call ‘My Fine Art Career.’]
Hoop Dancing: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks:
Chapter Four: “The Aspen Fire Circle & The Baby Blue Spruce” © 1999, 2003, 2008.
The forest fire's been burning since the 17th of June, over three weeks now.
Most of Summerhaven is gone. Most of the Ponderosa Pines and the Aspen trees, north of Summerhaven are gone. 70,000 acres gone. And it still burns.
I remember the day of the Big Blowup. The Aspen Fire had been burning slowly below the town of Summerhaven for a day or two. The firefighters were trying to put it out but they couldn't, and then a big wind came up and the flames took off up the hill, burning most of Summerhaven down to its foundations. It didn't stop there. The fire went up the road and over the road and slammed with the force of a freight train, right into Red Ridge.
On that Thursday afternoon, June 18th, 2003, I was looking out of an 8th story window in Downtown Tucson, watching the mountain burn, seeing the smoke change colors from gray to black, back to gray, back to black. Then suddenly I was seeing flames, bright and orange in the noon day sun, from at least twenty miles away. Flames licking higher than the Ponderosa tree line. No. No.
I got home from the day job and turned on the tube and every local station had live feeds from the mountain. No Seinfeld. No Wheel of Fortune. All fire, all the time. One station had a live shoot from a helicopter. The sun was setting. The shadows were growing long. The chopper was showing the remains of buildings in Summerhaven, some still burning. The trees were gone. Then they showed a shot of the Mount Lemmon ski lift to the northwest of Summerhaven. Safe, no fire there. I had a bit of hope. Then the helicopter panned to the east toward Red Ridge and it was an inferno. Flames 80 feet high, burning above and through the trees, the fire dancing and moving fast. I saw the spot where the Baby Blue Spruce tree I have used as a model for a Christmas card grew, but it was orange with flame and gray with smoke. No green. No blue. Only yellow, red and black
I couldn't see the northern overlook at Red Ridge or The Three Surrender trees from the helicopter shot, but I knew it would burn soon or was burning terribly right now. And I kept thinking about that Baby Blue Spruce, a tree who I saw as a friend. I would say hello to that little five foot tree every time I hiked down Red Ridge. Been saying hello to the Baby Blue for years now. Watching it grow from three foot to four foot to five feet tall. And now it’s gone. I could feel the small space where it once was. And I cried.
I cried hard that night and off and on over the next three weeks. I woke up one night, dreaming about the little animals of Red Ridge that couldn't escape. The squirrels, the lizards, some of the birds. And the trees that couldn't move but could only take it and burn.
Firefighters talk about the three types of fire that happen in Western forests. First type is the fire that burns mostly ground cover. It's good for the forest. The Ponderosa Pines can weather it with ease. The second type is a serious burn. Many trees die but not all the trees. All old dead wood is burned and living trees have a chance. But many trees are burned badly and die then or later. It's a bad burn. And then there is the third kind. Firefighters call it when the forest is 'Nuked'. All trees burn. All life burns. The fire is so hot it sterilizes the ground. Nothing lives. Nothing grows for a while afterwards.
Red Ridge was nuked that day. The 18th of June, 2003.
Now, it's the 6th of July. The fire turned south toward town, a couple of days ago. The prevailing winds have changed. For most of The Aspen Fire, the winds have blown toward Oracle, Arizona to the north, taking the fire and the smoke away from Tucson. Now the winds are blowing toward the southeast, blanketing parts of the city in a dark thick cloud. When I returned from Phoenix on Fourth of July night, I noticed that the usual ceiling of many stars was gone, replace by an low muddy orange cloud. I thought it was rain coming at first, but the cloud was too low. Then I look up toward the mountain that had been burning for weeks, and saw a fire line moving down toward the Foothills of Tucson. God Lord.
I have resisted taking any photographs of the Fire. Seems like nature disaster porno to me. But on the late afternoon of Sunday July 6th, I gave in, for I could see flames from the parking lot of my apartment, here in the Foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains. I feel this strange duality of wanting to slowly walk to the advancing line of flames, and at the same time, wishing to run away.
I get in my truck and drive the short distance to the Upper Foothills, the land of $400 greens fees, multimillion dollar mansions that stand empty half the year, and guard houses to gated communities where the streets have bizarre Spanish names like, Street Without Envy and Street Without Denial. Also it seems that most of the women in the Upper Foothills have exercised or starved themselves so much, that they have no ass at all. (Not that I'm a big ass-man, but no ass is kind of weird.) But today, there are new additions up here in The Land of Women with No Ass.
Groups of lookyloos from the valley floor who have come up for the show. Water tanker helicopters are dropping their heavy loads in long wet curtains. And a creeping slow line of fire is walking down the Front Ridge, toward the high end resorts and the mafia homes.
I park on the shoulder with the lookyloos, grab the Pentax with the long lens, and my tripod and hike to the top of a small hill south of Craycroft Road. A couple of other photogs are stationed along the way up the hill, mostly notably to me, a father and son team. They seem to be having a good time. While setting up my camera and tripod in the waning sunlight, I feel a slight sense of shame for being here in the first place. Like waiting by a railroad crossing after you have pushed an old car on the tracks and you hear a distant train whistle. Like hanging out in the lobby of a courthouse just to see the family of the victims and the defendants cry.
"Hey everybody. Let's go up and watch a mountain die."
But I'm here and I'm mesmerized. It's as if the primitive root part of my brain keeps me looking, to see which way the fire is going. To the east? To the west? Coming for me? Do I need to move the family now or are we OK? I could see my imaginary ancestral family of ten thousand years ago, sitting by my side. My mate is unhappy that we haven't left yet. My two boys are playing with the wolf. And I'm just looking up at the very slow moving fire, coming down at me.
I'm about five miles away I'm guessing. The flames are low, just a few feet high. They flare up when they hit a dead Mesquite tree or an old Manzanita bush, but then they die down again. It's the smoke that's letting me know where I am. Thick and acidic, with fluffy ash coming down like a snow flurry. My eyes are burning. The fire tourists stay only for a while and then go, only to be replaced by another group of lookyloos. I stay and shot for a couple of hours, through sunset and into the full darkness. No stars. Rings of fire creep down the steep hillside. Not as bad as Mordor from ‘Lord of the Rings’, but reminiscent. The tankers have stopped. Only sound is the lookyloos below me on Craycroft and a soft wind blowing through the Mesquite and Palo Verde trees. The smoke is very dense. My eyes can't take much more. I'm amazed at what firefighters can endure.
I take a roll of black and white and go home. Feeling a little dirty with smoke and shame, but I had a better time shooting that roll of film than I care to admit. I'm just a lookyloo too, but with a more expensive camera.
I walk up the stairs to my apartment, open the door and put my equipment back on the shelf. I take a shower to wash it all off. And after my shower, I walk into my living room and see the Christmas card I made with the Baby Blue Spruce, and cry all over again.
"Memorial Day for a Spruce Tree" (c) 2008 Stu Jenks
[See Chapter Four in the serialized "Hoop Dancing" web-book on this blog. Hopefully, it'll become a hold-in-your-hands-book in 2010]
[Phoenix has landed!!! My studio mate Dana's husband, Peter Smith, is the lead investigator of the Phoenix Mission. The spacecraft will dig into the Martian surface, looking for ice and hopefully organic material, and if it finds organics, that will be a very big deal. It's very exciting too, for the mission is, as I type, being controlled from a little building just a few blocks from my studio in Tucson, Arizona. I was down near Steward Observatory on campus this afternoon, when it landed, and we all watched the live feed from JPL, as it descended and came to rest. Much applause and a few tears by the scientists, some tears by me as well. Oh, and by the way, if you haven't notice by now, I'm a major geek with this kind of stuff. I remember seeing Saturn, live, with my own eyes, at age 15 in my little refractor telescope in my front yard in Raleigh, N.C.. And I'm proud for the U of A, and especially Peter Smith and his team. Good job, you all! Note: The above photo was pulled off of the NASA website. It's one of the first raw images to come back from Mars today. How cool is that, eh?]
[From less then 24 hours later, the first color composite of the Martian Polar Region. The men and women at Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) on 6th Avenue have been busy. Money, time and energy very well spent, if you ask me.]
Calexico, with Mariachi Luz De Luna, Salvador Duran, and Mariachi Aztlán de Pueblo High School, The Rialto Theatre, Tucson, Arizona, May 23rd, 2008: Images (c) 2008 Stu Jenks
[Images from top to bottom: "Members of Mariachi Aztlan singing 'Volver, Volver' ", "Joey and Luca", "The Women of Aztlan", and "Everyone Singing 'Heart of Gold' "
Hoop Dancing: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks:
Chapter Three: "The Three Surrenders" © 2003, 2008
April, 2003
I'm lying on my futon couch, watching Bad TV when I get a strong intuition. "Go to Red Ridge, Stu." Can't I just lie here and obsess about how my life isn't going so well? Or just watch Bad TV and avoid thinking about my life altogether?
I hating my day job of late, with its unremorseful criminals, unmotivated-to-change drug addicts and a bureaucracy that seems to have forgotten that the rank and file work with great hostility every day and make little money. But it pays the bills (sort of) in the way that the Art isn't. So I go to work in the mornings.
I like the inside of my little apartment with its wall to wall and I love the beautiful city view, at night, off my back balcony, but I have this neighbor to the east that has this huge TV with surround sound, that sounds like he’s landing planes next door. When I politely asked him to turn it down, he looks at me as if I'm taking away his constitutional right for entertainment.
And then there is Annie. On again off again love affair for the past twelve years, with us off again. A wonderful woman. I usually can end my love affairs with some grace (but not always) and then segway into the polite friendship area, but not with Annie. I love her but I'm not in love with her. She loves me but she isn’t in love with me. I can't fully disengage nor can she. We are so fucked.
So can't I just lay here on the futon, and watch TV? "Go to Red Ridge, Stu" says the quiet still voice. Shit. That rising feeling to go and create something just won't go away. It's a day or two pass Full Moon. I only get some many Full Moons in a year with clear skies. I'll feel inadequate if I don't go. So I rise from the futon sofa, put on my boots, grab the Rollei and the hula hoop and walk toward my front door. Another 747 lands next door. Son of a bitch. I give up.
"By the planet's arc, by the falling dark, by the state of the art, by the beat of my heart." Bruce Cockburn is rapping as I ascend Mount Lemmon highway. The slow dissolve from one flora to another is still magical after all these years. From Saguaro to Ocotillo to Manzanita to Mesquite to Ponderosa to Aspen, from the Sonoran desert to the Alpine forest.
I soon arrive at Red Ridge trail head and unload the truck. Put on the purple fleece I always carry in the truck, sling the hula hoop like a bandoleer over my shoulder, grab my camera and tripod and go.
I surrender.
I surrender a lot when I shoot. Sure, I come with a rough outline in my head most times, but my own spiritual and artistic experiences have shown me that spontaneous inspirations and blessed accidents are better artists than an ego that is afraid of being wrong or a rigid idea that must be seen at all costs.
But tonight’s a little different, as I walk through the chilly Ponderosa forest. I'm thinking I need to not only surrender up the shot, but I need to do some big surrendering tonight. Surrender up my job, my apartment, my love life, and ask God to direct me. Ask for the willingness to walk through the open doors if and when they come, or to accept the closed doors, and try not to knock them down.
The waning Full Moon is raising over an eastern ridge, gently for a change, not like a blinding truck headlight that I sometime see during my moonlight shooting. Just a bit of cloud tonight but not enough to matter with the exposure. I wander around with my camera, through this forest I know so well. I'm less than a mile from the road but it could be ten. I then see three Ponderosas in a line and think yea, three trees, three surrenders.
I pray for right relationship, right livelihood, and right domicile as the Buddhists say. I make multiple passes with the hula hoop, behind the three Ponderosas, each pass an act of letting go. First pass, Fiona. Second pass, the job, Third pass, the apartment. Help me to move or accept, God. To just stand still and let the changes comes to me. Or to be active in my own choices, and forget my fears and just do what I need to do. Help me to know which is which, and what is what. When to stand and when to move. When to hold firm and when to walk away. Help me, God, as you have some often before. I close the shutter. I think I slipped on some pine needles. I open the shutter again and re-shoot.
I do three more passes with the hoop and then move outside the frame, placing the Christmas Light Hull Hoop twenty feet from the trees. That felt right. I then walk up to a northern outcrop of granite on this part of Red Ridge and sit on the edge and let the Moon fill in the details of the shot behind me. About 15 minutes I figure. It also gives me some time, to simply close my eyes and breathe in and be with my prayers and with the forest.
I open my eyes and look North. Stars above and stars below. Even on full moon nights, at high elevation, you can see stars. Lots of stars. Miles away I see the stars of Oracle, the streetlights that mark the little town's few streets. I love Red Ridge. For so many years, I loved this place.
Hours go by. Many passes of the hula hoop. Many surrenders. Many times sitting on that rock looking North at stars. I feel good, feel better, knowing that I don't know what the surrenders will bring but I like surprises. And I know it'll be OK even if it isn't.
Around midnight, I pack up and walk up the Red Ridge trail. I don't use a flashlight. I don't need to. Past the North rock, where many women have been kissed. Past the little stand of Aspens I shot in the snow many years ago for an assignment in a photography class. Past a Baby Blue Spruce that I shot for a Christmas Card. Up and up and around a bend and down and back to the Pathfinder. I load up the truck and take off my purple fleece. I open a can of Tab, start the truck and put on Bruce Cockburn again. "Don't forget about delight," he sings.
I surrender.
"The Cairn Atop The Biscuit, The Mustang Mountains, Arizona" (c) 2008 Stu Jenks
Hoop Dancing: The Nocturnal Photography of Stu Jenks:
Chapter Two: "Leaving Middle Earth, Red Ridge, Santa Catalina Mountains, Arizona"
(c) 2002, 2008
Fall 2002:
Memories are funny things. Some are as clear as this morning's news. Others seem to be covered in gunk. My trip to Scotland a few years ago? A long train of vivid memories, loud and clear. Last week's conversation with my mother? I can hardly remember a thing, except that she was nervous about something.
But my past lovers? No problem remembering them. Even the ones who hate me now, I still remember with a bit of a smile, and it's not just because of the sex. (OK. It's because of the sex.) But also in there, is a lot of love for them that still resonates in my heart. And the love and kindness they gave to me? I still feel it, no matter how much distance there is or how much pain there was. That’s the beauty and curse of Love. You can never forget once you’ve taken The Big Jump. And a good half of the time, I would prefer to forget. Fat chance of that happening.
And Red Ridge is a strong place of memory for me. It didn't start out as a sacred/romantic spot. Just an out-of-the-way trail where few hiked. But over time, powerful, loving and light-filled experiences happened on that ridge, and it became a piece of land where my Crown Shakra had cracked open and God's light had been blown deep inside me. Red Ridge is also a place where my Root Shakra got hard as stone. With women nearby.
I remember kissing Karen, lightly and lustfully on Red Ridge twenty years ago. The softness of her skin. The smell of the lavender she wore. That orange skirt that sexily waved as she hiked. Her beautiful translucent white skin. The spring wind whispering through the Ponderosa Pines. The taste of her mouth. I killed the love affair by being too honest. Really didn't mean to. Was a time in my life when I had just found out that I could talk about my feelings. Didn't know, back then, that I need to keep some of them to myself.
I remember, fifteen year ago, how the sounds of small birds walking on the forest floor on Red Ridge spooked Annie. Sounds sometimes seem quite loud in Western forests. She thought it was something big: a bear, a deer perhaps. It really scared her. I tried to calm her by assuring her that it was nothing large, that a bear walking through the woods sounds like a plane crash. I thought saying that would make her laugh. It didn’t. She was just too spooked to find it funny. Later that afternoon, I particularly remember seeing Annie's strong gaze, as she looked northward toward Oracle. Her bright blue eyes. Her beautiful sharp nose. Her perfect skin. The curve of her ass. I can't remember the specifics of kissing her that day even though I know I did. I do however remember the electric touch of her small hand on my forearm. We dated off and on for years. We're still very good friends.
I remember watching Angie walk down the steep pine-needled hills of Red Ridge, as if she was walking on broken glass. It struck me as strange at the time as she appeared to be such an inexperienced hiker, when she had just told me that the previous summer she had hiked from the summit of Mount Lemmon to the valley floor of Tucson. That's a 15-mile hike, one-way. I found out later that Angie lied a lot. Lied about a lot of things. Important things. It lasted six months. I have no idea where she is now.
I remember kissing Maria sitting on a rock, then eating crackers, then smoking cigarettes. (We were careful to field-dress our smokes.) Maria was an amazing kisser. The strength and the softness of her lips was intoxicating along with those little moans of hers. I tried to give her credit for her kissing ability but she had a hell of time accepting compliments. She wanted more than I could give. She found it in another man, lost it, and hasn’t tried since.
I remember photographing Alice's naked back with a black spiral painted on it. She was lying under a tree, her spine and ass facing my camera. She looked like she had a target painted on her, a fallen deer that had just been shot. Not very spiritual nor very sexy either. Kind of creepy and she was so cold during the shoot. A failed shot, and I didn't kiss her. At least not then. She later found the man of her dream. I was happy for her.
And I remember the nights alone on Red Ridge. Perhaps those are the strongest and deepest memories I have, more so than when I had company.
In the 1980's, on a fall night, I was walking along Red Ridge to the rocky overlook that faced Oracle, Arizona. I remember the way the open space bedazzled me that night, when I looked out and down, as well as out and up. A huge negative space that made me stand very still and breathe very deep. No camera in the late 80's. I was just trying to get my shit together, in about a dozen different ways.
In the mid 1990's, with my new/old Rollei camera, trying my hand at light painting with a portable flash and some red gels, shooting among the Ponderosa Pines. No artistic successes with the Fuji Velvia film on the mountain then (A lot of bad photos), but I got to know that piece of forest a lot better. After a while, I could walk the trail on moon-lite nights without a flashlight. It was quite easy. From the trailhead, it was up, then around, then a little down, then a big down, then across, then a steady down, and another big down to the overlook. To the right from the overlook were seemingly neatly spaced century-old Ponderosa Pines. Thick beds of needles below them. No brush to speak of. Few rocks. Very old trees.
In the late 1990's, I was shooting black and white with some success. I shot Tibetan prayer flags that hung from an old Juniper tree near the western edge of Red Ridge, strung there in memory of a Buddhist therapist who died far too young. Wind horse carried the prayers, for a man who had few friends.
Tonight, I've come with my Rollei, Ilford Delta 100 Black and White film, and a hula-hoop with Christmas lights wrapped around it. I'm looking for open spaces between the trees. I find two old Ponderosas and a nice slope. I dance with the hoop, a bit awkwardly at first as my feet try to find purchase on the slick needles, then after a while I find some grace in my steps as I swing the hoop. I dance for about an hour in the waxing moon. Not much light but hopefully just enough.
Days later, looking at the proofs, I remember a scene in the film 'The Fellowship of the Ring', when the hobbits saw elves traveling through the woods on their way to the Gray Havens, and how sad the hobbits felt that the elves were leaving Middle Earth. And how I felt sad, looking at those proof sheets, wondering:
'Is all the magic and innocence leaving my Earth too, in this time of worldwide religious extremism, American Narcissism and the heartless acquisition of wealth? I hope not. God, I pray not.'
Today, I pray that all the elves haven’t gone to the Grey Havens and set sail. We need some of them to stay.
Or perhaps we need to be our own elves, now. Find our own elvish qualities.
Well, I’ll try and at least do my part.
“I know you will,” says the quiet voice within, that sounds bit like an elf.
"A Poster At A Yard Sale, Tucson, Arizona" (c) 2008 Stu Jenks & Cathy Spann
Do not mistake skin
for the light that
burns at the
edge of your dreaming
(c) May 14th, 2008 Charles De Lint
"The Downtown Tucson Library Panoramic" (c) 2008 Cathy Spann
"I’m Not Suicidal..." © 2008 Stu Jenks
[Image: "Owl's Head From The Air" © 2008 Stu Jenks]
[I’ve gotten some interesting phone calls and e-mails over the last two days. So here are some clarifications to the “Argument Against Photography” post on the StuBlog from a couple days ago]
Stu’s Fun Facts:
1) I'm not suicidal. I'm not ever that depressed. I'm just angry and sad. And grieving. Grieving the loss of a dream, a thought that I might actually be able make a bit of a career out of being an Fine Art Photographer. That without having MFA and a good teaching gig, I might be able to at least break even and not go into a shit load of debt making Fine Art Photography. I was wrong. I’m OK.
2) All I did was fire myself from my own one-man art business. That's it.
3) The photo at the top of the ‘Argument’ post was of an abandoned store in the ghost town of Bard, New Mexico. It isn't a photo of my studio after I'd gone bat-shit and trashed all my images. The kids are fine. I didn’t hurt them.
4) When I spoke of the Art Fucks out there, I wasn't talking about the current gallery folk, who carry my work and my cards in Arizona (You know who you are.) You all are the good guys. I wasn't talking about those wonderful Art people on Congress Street or those great women in the Foothills who show my work (You know who you are.) I wasn't talking about my past art rep (You know who you are.) I wasn’t talking about the good corporate people who have bought the rights to my images and bought the artistic services for a fair price (You know who you are.) I wasn't talking about any of the very good people, rich, poor and in-between, who have bought images of mine throughout the years or any of the book publishers who have bought the use of my images for their publications for a fair price (You know who you are.) I wasn’t talking about the fire performers, visual artists, musicians and writers who have worked with me and who have traded for services, so to speak, creating a wonderful circle of generosity and love. (You know who you are.) None of you all are the Shameless Exploiters. The Art Fucks. You all were, and are, the Good Folk. The very Good Folk.
5) I will still take pictures, just not with the same gusto or with the same commitment. I'll still have a camera in my truck, be it my Brownie or my Canon. I still will be working on my little Photo Books and posting them on my blog as I finish. I just quitting the Art Business. I’m not quitting making the Art. Can’t do that. (But to be honest, I’m tired and I need a break. Maybe a long break. Who knows. All we have is today, you know.)
6) I will be still blogging. The Ones and Zeros are just too much fun and I like to write.
7) I'll still be in some shows I suppose, but I just won't be spending a lot of money on framing work upfront, nor in persuing representation, nor in showing my work to new galleries and such. And I won’t be seeking admission to any juried shows at museums for a good long while.
8) It's really about the Coin why I've fired myself. Oh, and yes, it is about some of the jerks out there. But mostly, it’s about the Coin. The Big Debt.
9) And to the men and women I've done Fair Business with in the past, I'd be happy to do more honest ethical business with you. But the air has gone out of much of my balloon. And my ambition ain’t what it used to be. But I do and have appreciated working with you all. (God, I wish there were more of you out there.)
10) I'm just getting out of the Game. I’ll still be shooting hoops in the backyard. I'm just not going to be at the playground, looking for pick up games.
11) I'm really OK. Sad, angry, grieving, but OK.
12) And I treasure my friendships and loves with all you Good Folk, here in Tucson, and in Atlanta, New York, Wisconsin, Arizona, California, North Carolina, London, The UK, New Mexico, Utah, and all those other places I can’t remember. I’m not leaving you all and I don’t think most of you all are leaving me. I’m just leaving the Game, while I still have some.
"Jim's Two Year Chip" (c) 2008 Stu Jenks
"Ventana Canyon Time Travel" (c) 2008 Stu Jenks
[Taken last Winter while hiking in the snow in Ventana Canyon, just north of where I live in Tucson. Finished this morning before I head down to my studio for Day Two of the Spring Open Studio Tour. The blurs were done in camera. The colors were done in CS2. Part of my ongoing Time Travel series.]
"Ms. Spyder's Tea Party, Flam Chen, Tucson, Arizona" (c) 2008 Stu Jenks and Flam Chen
[Two images of Paul, Nadia and the Flam Chen Troupe performing 'Ms. Spyder's Tea Party' at Nimbus Brewery, on April 28th, 2008. Not many good images that night, from me. I really need to invest in that $1600 long fast Canon lens. I hate to go more into debt, but I may have to, if I'm going to stay viable in all of this. All of this photography thing.
I didn't intend to be a photographer. Really. I was just an artist who wanted to make circles and spirals and show them around. Capture the mystery of the night and all of that. Photography seemed like the best way to do it. Now, I want to make more night images but with people in them too, and my lens glass isn't long enough or fast enough. Maybe I'll just go to the BR-549 Studios and hang some batik from a rock instead. Nah. I love the fabric work but I still have these images in my head that need to come out.
Sometimes I wish I was a trust fund baby. I'd be a great trust fund kid. Generous with the extra cash. Openly grateful to the dead grandparent that pays for my rent, my ink, my paper, my camera, my food. Guess I'll still have to keep going to the day job after all. Fuck. Well, life could be much worse. I could be living in Burma.
And I got a couple of OK images that night, I suppose. I quite like the intimacy and strength in the image of Nadia and Paul, spinning poi. And the graininess of the Woo Shoo poi shot doesn't bother me at all.
Thank God, Paul and Nadia get what I'm trying to do, namely to help build a bit of artistic community and cooperation, in a time of greed and selfishness. We'll all continue to work hard and perhaps with luck, we'll make a bit more coin then we are right now. Maybe a lot of coin if we time it right and are very fortunate. Who knows. Bottom line: The work has the be the primary pleasure.]
![Laxmii's Flight [Flam Chen]](http://stujenks.typepad.com/photos/circle_stories_vol_1_hoop/./laxmiisflight4-thumb.jpg)