Stu Jenks: Fezziwig Photography, Music, and Writing

"Conejons, Colorado" (c) 2007

"Conejons, Colorado" (c) 2007 Stu Jenks

      

[On the border of New Mexico and Colorado, the little town of Conejons has two gas stations and a small grocery store. Bought gas at one of the stations. The women-proprietor offered to pump my gas. Very nice of her. We talked for a while and I learned that Conejons is Rabbit in Spanish. Paid for the gas and then drove across the street and took this shot of the twin water tanks. Remember seeing her watching me as I took this picture. A bit of a puzzled look was on her face, wondering, I suppose, why I found them so interesting. I was struck (and still am) by the unintentional irony of the paintings on the tanks. One tank holds a portrait of Indian life, a smiling Native couple, with tranquil buffalo roaming among the teepees. The right side tank displays an Anglo farming family, with a child, and a spade, and a procession of priests trekking across the prairie. The Natives are long gone from this part of Colorado, either killed, starved, diseased, or exiled. No reservations near by. The Cheyenne and others are just a memory now, illustrated in black and white, and a bit of green, on the side of a water tank. In spite of the sad and odd imagery, Conejons seemed to be a nice little town. Glad I bought gas there. Then again, I didn't stay long enough to find out its dark secrets or its quiet kindnesses.]

 

“The Road to Uncompahgre Peak” © 2007

 

“The Road to Uncompahgre Peak, Colorado” © 2007 Stu Jenks

[Images: "Sioux Mud on Snow, Colorado", “The Rialto Theatre, Alamosa, Colorado”, “Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado”, “Daylight Donuts, Alamosa, Colorado”,“Uncompahgre Peak, Colorado”, "#7 Site at Silver Thread Creek Campground, Colorado", "Blue Jay, Oatmeal & Tripod", and "North of Creede"  © 2007 Stu Jenks

 

        Thursday, October 18th, 2007

        Alamosa, Colorado. The first Western town I ever visited and stayed at, for a length of time. (I don’t count Austin, Texas, the city I visited a few days before Alamosa in 1977. Texas ain’t really the West to me. Texas is Texas, a separate country.) Came to visit Bob, a friend I went to Carolina with, until he transferred to Adams State in Alamosa. Sadly I haven’t keep up with Bob. Have no idea where he is. Then again we drifted apart soon after he left Chapel Hill. Visiting him in Colorado was one of the last times we spent any real time together. Still remembering drinking the 3.2 beer and complaining about it. Also remember drinking Lone Star beer and not. Bottom line, Bob was a good man and I hope he is doing well, thirty years after our last meeting.

        I visited the Great Sand Dunes National Park this morning. First time in thirty years. Hiked to the top of the highest dune, 700 feet about the surrounding landscape. Beautifully cold. Ran into an older man at the top who said he was ‘semi-retired’. (Semi-retired means to me: Rich; Maybe have to fly to a board meeting every now and again; Travel a lot; Spend a lot of money.) Tough old bird. A member of the Elite but  he can’t be too spoiled if he was willing to plod through steep sand to get to the top of a big-ass sand dune. Not an easy climb at all. I left the $1200 Canon 30D in the truck today. Took the Brownie and the old Pentex instead. Had a wonderful time, wind hitting my face, sand soft and rough at the same time, thinking about days, thirty years prior, with Bob and some of his other friends. Happy I can still make it to the top. Remembered a voice telling me back then, that I needed to ‘stop smoking.’ It was saying stop smoking dope not tobacco back in the day. Now, the voice is saying ‘quit smoking’ and now it’s about tobacco. I tied a red prayer bundle (containing tobacco) on some tall grass, prayed for others, and myself and found a healing rock for me and a power rock for Annie on the way back to the truck.
        Got to Alamosa in the mid afternoon. Stopped and mailed a few postcards at the main Post Office. Longed for a Daylight Donut but they were already closed for the day, yet I could still smell the baking donuts on the sidewalk by the front door. Hmmm. (A day or two later I was driving through Alamosa again and stopped by, but alas, still closed. No Hot Donuts Then Either.) Oh well. Got some gas and headed west toward the San Juans and Uncompahgre Peak.

        The plan was this: Drive to the 4 x 4 trail that goes up to the trail-head for Uncompahgre Peak. If the snow is too deep, car-camp at the base of the jeep trail. If the snow is shallow, head up as far as I can go. Probably won't make the trail head. Definitely won't be hiking to the top, like years ago. Just camp somewhere along the jeep trail. That was the plan.
        I’m driving on Route 149 west of the little village of Creede now. Up I go. No worries. No snow except on the highest peak from what I can see. Easy driving. I drive by a formal Forest Service campground with its ten campsites, its wooden picnic tables and its iron grills. Called the Silver Thread Campground. Looks to be only one camper there. It is Fall, it is cold, and it is a weekday. I turn my nose up at this modern campground as I drive by. Wouldn’t think of camping at such a citified campsite. I’m heading for the wilderness. Up in the deeper snow.
        Then I notice it’s getting colder and colder and more and deeper snow is appearing on the roadside. I know it’s colder for now my truck heater can’t keep up with the outdoor temperature. That means it’s very cold.
        I reach the Slumgullion Pass, that is south of Lake City and now I’m hitting patches of snow and black ice in the road. My heart rate goes up. About an hour, maybe two of sun left. I engage the four-wheel drive, but as any rock hopper knows, the four by four is really a two by two, and it doesn’t do much if anything against ice. I crack my moon roof and stick out my hand. Sweet Jesus it’s cold. Well, I am at around twelve thousand feet. I do the math. If it’s this cold now, that means tonight it’ll be zero or below. I won’t freeze to death for I've got a good bag and a good coat but I may be uncomfortable. And I do have a desert battery in my truck. Negative teen temperatures tend to kill car batteries. I’m beginning to reconsider my plan. Even at the base of Uncompahgre Peak I may get stuck in snow or at least be really cold. Hmmm.
        Suddenly, I round a corner and see Uncompahgre Peak a few miles in the distance.
        “Good Lord!” I say.
        This is a sight that I’ve only seen on TV and in movies but never in person. An image of snow being blown horizontally off the top of a mountain by the very high winds at the summit. An image of the Dead Zone.
        I stop and take the Dead Zone’s picture. I then settle on an improvised Plan B.

        An hour later, I’m at the Forest Service campground I scoffed at earlier. Suns almost down. I’ve set up my Svea 123 stove on the picnic table and it’s burning like a jet engine, heating water to a boil, to make coffee and oatmeal for dinner. I’m eating string cheese while I wait. It tastes like creamy ambrosia.

        I’ve unrolled my Kelty bag in my truck and I’ve set up my old Rollei camera on a near by hill, for some nocturnal star circles shooting later. A couple of hunting parties are across the way in their RVs, but no one is close to me. I’m eating cheese with gloved hands, and I couldn’t be happier. Maybe a little happier if I had someone to share this little paradise with, but not much happier. The snow under my feet is powdery and dry. No clouds in the skies. And the cold air wakes you up like loving slap on the ass. And it’s not too cold here. In the twenties I’m guessing, not sub-zero. Big difference between 20 degrees and –20. Like the three bears, the third bed/porridge/chair was just right. And the Silver Thread Campground is just right.
        The water reaches a boil and I pour it on top of the instant mocha coffee inside my blue enamel cup. I stir and sip the boiling lumpy liquid.
        “Sweet Jesus who lives in Heaven.”
        I take a second sip and close my eyes in rapture.

Friday, October 18th, 2007

        Except for getting up once to close the shutter on the 2 1⁄4, I slept for ten hours. Ten hours straight, pretty much. I haven’t felt this good in years after sleeping. The 10,000-foot-high cold mountain air didn’t hurt none either. And now I’m watching a blue jay eat my leftover oatmeal.

        I leave the bird to peck my bowl in peace and headed up a spruce-covered hill to the south. Already been up to the ridge-line a few times this morning. This time I’ve come up to pray.
        After prayers, I come back down, pack up my gear, and finish my coffee. The blue jay has finished my oatmeal. It's still early, around 8 a.m. but I have one more place to go before I leave.
        The small stream that traverses the campground becomes a hundred-foot waterfall a couple hundred yards from my truck. I grab the Canon and head to take some pics. I arrive and just slow down even more. I take a few impressionistic zooms of the rushing stream but mostly I just sit. Sit and have a smoke. Sit after the smoke. Sit and sit some more. Loud water, be it a fast stream over rocks or waves at the ocean, does that to me. Slows everything down. Thinking stops, feelings settle, my eyes sort of cross.
I then close my eyes, and all the World is Sound.

"Wheel" (c) 2005 Edgar Heap of Birds

"Wheel" (Detail) (c) 2005 Edgar Heap of Birds (Hock E Aye VI), Cheyenne/Arapaho, b. 1954., Porcelain Enamel on Steel, Denver Art Museum.

NAH-KEV-HO-EYEA-ZIM
(Cheyenne meaning: "We are coming home again at last.")

"The Medicine Man" (c) 1907 Edward S. Curtis

"The Medicine Man" (Detail) (c) 1907 Edward S. Curtis, Denver Art Museum

[Appears this was a Lakota named Slow Bull. Curtis wrote, a hundred years ago, "Invocation and supplication enter so much into the life of the Indian, that this picture of the grim old warrior invoking the Mysteries, is most characteristic." Curtis has been criticized for over-romantizing the Indians. You think? Invoking the Mysteries, eh? I think, at the time, he was posing for you, Edward. My guess is he wasn't praying at that particular moment. And obviously, I don't buy it that Indians are intrinsically more spiritual than anyone else. They just pray in a different way. Ain't no better or worse than a Buddhist meditating in a temple, a Catholic praying the rosary, or a Alcoholic saying the Serenity Prayer. Irregardless, he did take some very nice photographs, even if they were mostly fantasies. And I enjoyed taking this image at the Denver Art Museum, knowing that this image sells for a boatload of cash down the street, and given the generosity of the Museum, I was allowed to take the picture for free.]
 

"The Neo-Cons and the Con-Temps " © 2007

"The Neo-Cons and the Con-Temps " © 2007

Top Image: "Last of the Great Buffalo Hunters" (Detail) [Paint, Leather, Ceramic, and Glue on Wood] (c) 1987 Robert Arneson, Denver Art Museum. Below Image: "Feather Sculpture #2" (Zoom Fuzzy Detail) [Willow, Feathers, Buckskin] (c) 1994 Truman Lowe, Denver Art Museum.
 

Contemporary Artists are the Neo-Cons of the Art World. Not that much difference between them and George Bush and his minions.

Now that I have your attention, let me explain and let me define a few terms too. And maybe give you a message of hope for the future of Art too.

Modern Art is pretty much everything from the late 1800's up to the 1970's. From Picasso to Pollock. Also Matisse, Calder, Warhol, Christo, Arneson and everything good and powerful in between. Modernism dealt with the ideas of abstraction, emotion, and life in the modern world, but it still had an eye for design, color and form. Contemporary Art, on the other hand, is Stuff that is called Visual Art that comes out of New York, Los Angeles, London and a few other U.S. and European cities since the late 70's and 80's. It's about some sort of idea about something, usually shocking or political, and has absolutely nothing to do with Beauty and very little to do with Design. The idea is the thing, what the eye sees is secondary. Most everyone who isn't involved in the Art World thinks it's pretentious, or meaningless or ugly, or all the above and most times they are right. Those inside the Contemporary Art World see it as cutting edge and original and forward thinking, and they are only right about it being original. Each bowel movement is different from the next. Same can be said about most of this shit.

People say it's not Art. They are wrong. It's Art. It's just bad Art.

[Brief aside: It's seem bizarre to me that people call Bad-Art, Not-Art. If you go to a crappy movie, you don't come out and say 'That wasn't a movie.' If you go to a concert and it sucks, you don't say that it wasn't music. You just say that it's shitty music. Only visual art has this distinction and it think I know why. Because people hold Visual Art up to a higher standard, to an almost religious height, which makes sense since some of the most beautiful Art ever made was spiritual. We have higher expectations of Visual Art. It must be beautiful or at the very least well done and well produced. It must be transcendent. It must not be merely entertainment or a joke. It must be not just a bumper sticker or a sign that someone needs therapy. It should lift us up to be better or at least lift up our spirits a bit.]

And sadly, Art which was the primary source of human creation for thousand of years is now a distant 4^th at best, behind Music, Motion Pictures, and The Internet. The number of people that go to an opening at a small city Contemporary Art museum or gallery on a Saturday night is less than the number of hits I get on my little Stu-Blog in a day. Not that my blog is all that wonderful but you get my drift.

And why are they, the Contemporaries, The Con-Temps, like the Neo-Cons and George Bush? Consider this. The Neo-cons look like Republicans but they aren't really. They are not fiscal conservatives. There are autocrats. They are bullies. They will break the bank. Same said for the Con-Temps. They looks like artists and act like they like art but they don't. They like themselves and people like themselves and no one else. They are an exclusive elite club, like the Neo-Cons, in which members can only enter if they fit a very narrow definition of Cool. Preferably Cool with a lot of Cash. The Con-Temps aren't interested in Beauty or Peace or Building Community. They are selfish and self-centered, only wishing to build in their power, ego and prestige. Same can be said for the political Neo-Cons. Chaos, be it War or economic downturn builds more opportunity to make money from cronyism and from buying low and selling high. Same with the Con-Temps. Cronyism is a key. You sell each other shit. It's a visual circle jerk in which everyone must grab the cock of the guy next to him. And finally, there is an orthodoxy to both the Neo-Cons and the Con-Temps. It's my way or the highway. Believe in my socio/political worldview or my narrow artistic worldview, and everything is fine. But if you don't, I'll bring you down with bombs, bribery, or vicious ridicule. All with a smile of the self-righteousness on their face. No 'live and let live' in these folk. No love and tolerance from them. But they may give you a sales pitch that says that they do love and appreciate you and your differences. Don't believe it. They are either trying to take something from you, or force something on you.

And I'm not just speaking sour grapes. I was what they called a Conceptual Artist in Art School in the 1970's. Leashing myself to trees. Burying myself in fire brick in the center of campus while the cameras rolled. Painting outlines of traffic dead on city streets in the middle of the night, and getting in trouble with the law. I had some Big Ideas, and I had my shtick, my rap about those Ideas. But looking back, I had a couple of good pieces but most of my work was unfocused, marginally produced and smelled of Marijuana smoke. But even back then I wasn't completely sold on the idea, that The Idea was king and that The Visual was a serf you raped in the fields. I was making yearly pilgrimages to the Hirshhorn Museum in D.C. to see Rodin's "Burgher of Calais" and "Balzac". I've loved Calder since I was a kid. And my experimental 8 mm films from Art School did have some heart, not just brains.

Of late, I'm shopping around getting a book published of my Art and Words. Not going so well but I have friends who are helping. I may end up self-publishing at some point, when I get an extra 5000 dollars from somewhere. Anyway, the reason I'm working on books is I'm tired of dealing with the Entitled Rich (and I'm not talking about the Generous and Soulful Rich, so to my two rich Michaels I know, I'm not talking about you). I'm tired of them talking down my prices, of being fickle and arrogant, and I suddenly realized a few years ago that it's par for the course these days in the Visual Arts. I'm expecting a pig to be a pony. And I like books for I can sell them to people like me: the Struggling Middle and Working Class who always have enough money for a good CD, a good movie or a good book. I want to be another good book they can buy.

And I believe there is hope for Art. I hear that students out of high school are demanding that their university Art professors teach them how to draw better, sculpture better, craft better and if they don't, they leave and go to a school that will. I visited the Disney School of Animation in L.A. a few years ago and saw amazing draftsmanship on butcher paper hanging in the lobby after a critique. Master illustrators like Charles Vess are finally getting their due. Chihuly has a multi-million dollar glass chandelier in the Bellagio Lobby in Vegas. The elegant furniture of Scott Baker is winning awards. And Crane Day, weaver extraordinaire, can be found working magic with the mohair wool just ten feet from my studio door.

I think I'll to go to my studio now, and play my mandolin for a while. Play it through my Roland Cube with the Chorus and Reverb settings at 10 o'clock. My little ambient songs are quite pretty, I think, and quite Modern. And not Contemporary in the least.

 

 

"Indian Gothic" (c) 1983 David P. Bradley

"Indian Gothic After Grant Woods' American Gothic" (c) 1983 David P. Bradley at the Denver Art Museum.

"Jingle Jingle" (c) 1997 Judith Lowry

"Jingle Jingle" (c) 1997 Judith Lowry, Denver Art Museum, Colorado

[A homage to the murdered cousin of the artist. He, the cousin, was killed after he threatened to expose the corruption he found at an Indian casino. And almost needless to say, the painting comments on Indian gambling as a whole.]

"Standing Bear's Tipi" (c) 1884, 2007

"Standing Bear's Tipi" & "Cheyenne Coup Stick" (c) 1884, 1870s & 2007 Stu Jenks, Standing Bear and an unknown Cheyenne, Denver Art Museum

[Many thanks to Michael Doll, for being at his desk when I finally got cellphone coverage after days in Wyoming and in South Dakota without it. Not that it's that big a deal for me to not have the ability to chat and drive, but it was timely when I got the beep on my phone that said 'Yes, you can call now.' I was just south of Laramie, Wyoming. I'd done the math. I could get to the Denver Art Museum, God willing and the creek don't rise, by around 4 p.m. That would give me an hour to see their renowned Native American Art collection. It'd be fast but I could see the highlights, see the tipi I saw 18 years ago, experience an number of other things. I thought I'm not going to stay in Denver overnight to see the Art, for I had to get to the Great Sand Dunes and the San Juan Mountains the next day. This was my only time, my only chance. It's this afternoon or not at all. Michael answered his phone and while we were catching up, he looked up on the Internet to find out what time the Museum closed. If it was 5, I was fine. If it was earlier, I was fucked. He looked, he found, he said..."Says here the Museum closes at 5 p.m."...Hot damn. Thanks Michael for that and a hundred other things.]

[The next few posts, over the next few days, will be of my photographs of the paintings, sculptures and artifacts from the Denver Art Museum. (Oddly enough, you can take pictures in the DAM as long as you don't use a flash and the Art is part of their permanent collection.) Pictured above are Standing Bear's Tipi and a Cheyenne Coup Stick. The big question I had looking at the tipi was "How did they get this? Did they steal it? Did they buy it for pennies from a relative or from him? Did they just find it?" No answers. But it was beautiful and the paintings on the canvas of his recollections of his deeds in war were more moving than most of the Contemporary Art Crap you see these days. And the coup stick wasn't bad either.]

"The Albany County Buffalo" (c) 2007

"The Albany County Buffalo, Wyoming" (c) Stu Jenks 2007

Shame I don't have a MP3 module on this blog. I recorded this big boy's breathing on a small handheld digital recorder while I was photographing him. He was both curious and mildly irritated with me as I shot him. He did allow me to pet him a couple of times but he was not too fond of my camera. His fellow corral-mate was only mildly interested in me. He, on the other hand, came right over and said hello. But it was the sound that I wish I could play for you on this blog. He and I just stood together for a while. I wasn't shooting. I was just leaning on the fence and he was leaning toward me from his side. His breath rattled loudly through his throat and his huge head, sounding much like water going down a bathtub drain. He wasn't angry (then). He was just breathing. Actually, he was never was really angry with me. He just got spooked by the sound of my camera shutter a couple of times.

 

As I said in an earlier post, the sadness I felt of the absence of the herds of Bison was profound. The roving street gangs of Antelope didn't make up for the lack of the Ocean of Buffalo that had once lived on these plains. Don't get me wrong. I don't romanticize these creatures, at least not too much. They are not the sharpest pencils in the pack and they can be a bit ornery. But there is something about them, like boulders that slowly move through the grass. They are, after all, the largest land mammals in North America. Like a cross between a dog and a mountain.

And I may be projecting this, but when I looked in his eye, and I did a number of times, it was as if I could see him thinking, wanting, wishing for this:

"Please let me out of here."

I wish I could.

I wish I could raise the all the Buffalo from the dead.

I wish there were scenic overlooks on the Interstate where you could watch a Sea of Bison run by.

I wish for a lot of things.

Only a few of them come true.

 

[The top two images are mine and the buffalo's. The bottom image is of William Jacob Hays' painting "Herd of Buffalo", Circa 1862. It's part of the permanent collection at the Denver Art Museum.]

"Bowling In Walsenburg" (c) 2007

"Bowling in Walsenburg, Colorado" © 2007 Stu Jenks

       "Beautiful weather, isn't it," says the cheerful old obese woman.
       "Yes it is," I say, smiling back to her.
       While we're both buy gas, we exchange pleasantries. I'm guessing she lives here. I'm just passing through on my way up north. It's about 8 p.m. The over-weight sweetheart walks to the convenient store. I finish pumping my gas, pull away from the pumps, and park the truck 20 feet away. A couple dogs bark at me from a backyard to my left. The air is cool and crisp but not too cold.
       Walsenburg is a small town on I-25. South of everything, north of not much. A town that was probably a farm railroad stop back in the day. Now, it's a town that gets much of its money from the Interstate as well as from the ranch and the farm. Walsenburg holds a special place in my heart, for this was the first small western town I stopped in, on my first quest out west in 1977.
       I first hitchhiked from North Carolina to visit friends of friends in Austin, but got stuck outside of town. Stood all day on a two lane, but no one picked me up. Took a bus then to Walsenburg and after I arrived, I called an old college friend at Adams State in Alamosa, from the bus stop. I asked if he could put me up for a couple of days, if you could come get me. I still remember that phone call. I was a stoner flake back then. Hadn't even bothered to call ahead, to see if Bob was busy or in town. Just assumed it was OK. Lucky for me he was home. Bob laughed when he heard my voice and when I asked for a ride to Alamosa, a hour away, he said, sure, we'll be over as soon as he can.

"But let me call you back in 5 minutes," he said. "I need to check to see if the mountain pass is closed."
       Closed, I thought. A light drissle was coming down in Walsenberg.
       "Closed? What do you mean, Bob?" 
       "There may be snow on the pass. We might not be able to get through to pick you up."
       "Oh."
       It was August. I was floored. I had no idea.
       Welcome to the West, Stu.
       I was a baby, back then. 23 going on 50.
       Now, I'm not. I'm sweetly naïve in some ways, but I ain't nobody's fool anymore. Or at least I tell myself that. No large molecules of THC running through my veins either, but I still have Nicotine in them. My eyes are brighter and clearer and have been for years. I do get angry at the greed and selfishness of America in the 21^st Century, but I still know that what really matters, regardless of who's President or what others do, is the kindness, compassion and love that one person give to another, one person at a time, one day at a time. Like the short exchange I just has with that pudgy old woman. She greeted me first with kindness. I easily returned it. It does make for a better world, when we smile or laugh with each other or simply acknowledge the strangers around us with a grin.
        One dog's still barking to my left but the second one has lost interest in me. I then see my first artsy shot of the trip (even though I've already shot 40 snapshots driving through Arizona and New Mexico today.) That bowling alley over there. Looks to be five- or ten-laner. That sign's wonderful. Can see lots of activity inside. It's a hopping place on a Saturday night. Good clean fun, in a small western town.
       I pop a half dozen shots, and look at the back of the D30. Yea. This'll make a nice first image of my trip, a trip down memory lane, but also to brand new places too. A journey through my Western past into my Western Now.
       I stow my camera, start the truck and head back to the Interstate. All is well.