Stu Jenks' Fezziwig Press

Red Maples Leaves

"Red Maple leaf, on the branch in my front yard, Greensboro, North Carolina" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

 

"Red Maple left, on a white rock, Cane Creek, North Carolina" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

 

Tobacco Barn, Caswell County, North Carolina

"Tobacco Barn, Caswell County, North Carolina" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks

As I was taking this image, I could see the final composition in my mind's eye. I love fine elegant composition. I like how easy my eye moves around this photograph: down the roof line, back up to the trees, resting on the upper door and the red wood for a second, then back down the roof line again. I'm also grateful to have really good glass (Canon 70-200 mm f/2.8 IS lens) to make it all happen.

My father used to say, "it's a sad dog that won't wag its own tail" 

Well, Dad, I'm wagging here.

Pamela's Baby Rocking Chair, Ruby's Mini-Mart, Caswell County, North Carolina

"Pamela's Baby Rocking Chair, Ruby's Mini-Mart, Caswell County, North Carolina" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

 

A day at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

All photos (c) Stu Jenks 2021

Sarah Spencer and Charlsie Dickson

"Sarah Spencer, Ashe County, North Carolina" (c) image capture 2021 Stu Jenks.

 

"Charlsie Dickson, Ashe County, North Carolina" (c) image capture Stu Jenks 2020.

 

On Joe Thomas Road, not far from my wife's family farm, is an small cemetery. Atop a hill, surrounded by mountain pastures and farm land, this cemetery is a lovely spot to stop, walk, and look around.

I've walked the grounds a couple of times. The first time in 2020, I found little Charlsie's portrait, her having died in 1926 at age 8.

A few weeks ago, I found Sarah's grave. Unfortunately, I did not photograph her whole stone so I don't precisely know when she died and how old she was, but I recall she was in her 30's and she also died in the early 20th century.

I'm struck by Sarah's beauty and her passionate intelligent eyes. Speaking of eyes, and I may be projecting here, but Charslie looks so sad. Sweet and sad. But that could be my 21st century prejudices.

One thing I do know is the survivors pay for the grave stones. You can tell Charslie's parents loved her very much, enough to spend the money for a ceramic photo plaque. Those were not cheap, nor were the stones themselves. And Sarah's husband purchased a very fine stone too, and got a photo plaque made of her beautiful face.

Now I'm guessing here. I can see Sarah's husband visiting her grave often just to see her face. She was stunning with smart and kind eyes. I'm sure he missed her a lot. I can see why.

The work of Kawase Hasui

I am fortunate enough to live two miles from a wonderful university-based art museum, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, associated with the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Right now, they are having their annual paper show and a traveling Japanese woodblock print show. These are four of the image captures I took at the woodblock show.

I adore Kawase Hasui's work. Discovered him just a few years ago when I saw his work in another shin-hanga show in Richmond.

I'm big on good composition. Really big.

I'm also a big fan of the Bit-of-Red School of Art, where a touch of crimson dramatically highlights a painting, a print, a photograph. (An example of that can also be seen in my photograph Pamela's Baby Rocking Chair, Brown's Summit, North Carolina, at the bottom of this post).

And I'm a sucker for any winter scene.

Hasui is a master of composition, of the Bit-of-Red and of portraying wintry wonderlands.

I emotionally fall into his prints. I just do. I hope you can too from these digital images, but as you know, there is nothing like seeing a painting, a sculpture, a woodblock print, in person.

I hope you enjoy his work. He's simply magical.

 
#stujenks, #hasuikawase, woodblockprints

“Abraham Lincoln #2, Saguaro Rib, Arizona” [Extended Family Series] (Originally "Thomas Hart Benton")

“Abraham Lincoln #2, Saguaro Rib, Arizona” © Stu Jenks 2021, 56 inches tall. (Originally "Thomas Hart Benton")

Price: $125, shipping included. Simply contact me via my email address at [email protected] or Facebook message me, if you would like to purchase one of my pieces. Payments can be made with Paypal, Venmo or credit card with Square. All pieces are signed with its title, and can be hung from the wall.

 

This is a very complicated piece.

Originally this stick was made for Thomas Hart Benton. A painting of his in the North Carolina Museum of Art moves me greatly. (An image capture of that painting is at the bottom of this post.) This 1945 painting is of a family moving from their home before flood waters reach them and their house. A few years ago, that painting was a powerful metaphor for me, because I had to leave my wife and Greensboro to return home to Tucson, in order to work, and make a living. I felt like that man lifting that bed into the wagon.

So. I made Thomas Hart Benton a walking stick. Signed it and everything.

Then I saw Ken Burns' documentary on the man a couple of weeks ago.

Benton was a complete and utter asshole it appears.

He treated everyone badly: wife, students, contemporaries, you name it. He drank way too much. He hated gays and said often how much he disliked the 'limp wrist crowd'. He thought he was the greatest artist who ever lived. He was a bad guy.

Jackson Pollack was one of his students. Benton said of Pollack, "The only thing I taught Jack was how to drink a 1/5 of scotch a day." A day. I know.

I told Alexa about my displeasure with the man. She suggested I burn the stick. I kind of liked that idea. It would burn like a son of a bitch in our fireplace. But I choose a more middle path, sanding off Benton's name and dedicating the stick to someone I actually care about, like Abraham Lincoln.

Old Abe already has a piece made in his honor, a saguaro stick, somewhat heavier from this one. I've been wanting to make Honest Abe another functioning walking stick, something he might have actually used if we had lived at the same time, and he happened to wander into my studio in 19th Century Washington, D.C.

So Mr. Lincoln, you get another stick.

And Thomas Hart Benton? You are shit out of luck. Love your paintings but you can go straight to hell. As you can tell, I feel very strongly about this.

I've said this since I was in art school, said it for decades actually:

You can be a good person and a good artist all at the same time.

The asshole white male artist driven by his creative passions is a cop-out. You, Benton, Picasso, many others, just didn't give a fuck about other people. You were children who just wanted you wanted when you wanted it, wrapping your awful behaviors in artistic rhetoric. It's a rationalization, not a vision statement. Simply, you were dicks. You knew it. I know it. Fuck you.

I've had the opportunity to make sticks for extended family members who were jerks. I've only made one, and that was the Uncle Courtney Saum/Donald Trump stick. If I'm going to spend the hours making lovely pieces, I want to make them only for lovely people. Just the way this artist is built.

Sorry for the lecture. Here enddeth the lesson.

#lincoln, #stujenks, #extendedfamilyseries, #thomashartbenton

"Sacajawea, Mountain Laurel, North Carolina" [Extended Family Series]

“Sacajawea, Mountain Laurel, North Carolina” © 2021 Stu Jenks, 68 inches long.

Price: $200, shipping included. Simply contact me via my email address at [email protected] or Facebook message me, if you would like to purchase one of my pieces. Payments can be made with Paypal, Venmo or credit card with Square. All pieces are signed with its title, and can be hung from the wall.

 

We all know that Sacajawea helped Lewis and Clark in the expedition west, but I didn't know that she had been bought by the French trapper Toussaint Charbonneau from another tribe to be his wife/slave. Charbonneau also came along for the ride with Lewis and Clark and the others.

Truly, the reason Sacajawea proved so valuable on that trip was she spoke many of the native languages of the tribes along the way, and because she was a Native American woman among all white people. Many of the tribes would have simply killed the members of the expedition if Sacajawea wasn't there, walking with her infant son in her arms. And reading between the lines, she was a lot more fun to be around than her husband Toussaint. I just find it interesting that Charbonneau is lost to time. Sweet justice if you ask me, that we don't remember at least one white jerk at all.

Note to the U.S. mint: It was nice of you to make the Sacagawea Dollar but y'all messed up, making it roughly the size of a quarter. You can still fix this problem now, making the coin more like the British One Pound coin, roughly the size of a nickel but much much thicker and heavier in weight. Americans I believe would use that dollar, if it didn't feel just like a quarter in our pockets. Yes, yes, passing extensive national voting rights legislation to keep our country from falling into complete autocracy is a number one priority, but making a good dollar coin should be up there too. Just saying.

#sacajawea, #stujenks, #extendedfamilyseries

"Guy Clark, Dogwood, North Carolina" [Extended Family Series]

“Guy Clark, Dogwood, North Carolina” © 2021, 57 inches tall.

Price: $125, shipping included. Simply contact me via my email address at [email protected] or Facebook message me, if you would like to purchase one of my pieces. Payments can be made with Paypal, Venmo or credit card with Square. All pieces are signed with its title, and can be hung from the wall.

 

I was fortunate enough to see the singer-songwriter Guy Clark perform at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, in San Francisco, in 2010. I even video taped him with real live gear. I knew who he was from songs like LA Freeway and Desperados Waiting For A Train but I really didn't know how remarkable he truly was. Until that day.

An old and ailing man, he still put his back into every song. I am blessed to have experience that performance.

Here is the link to YouTube of Guy Clark performing "Let It Roll" that day.

Dogwood seems like the perfect wood for a country gentleman like Guy.

Rest in peace, Mr. Clark. You touched many.

#guyclark, #extendedfamilyseries, #stujenks.

“Dave Drake The Slave Potter, Saguaro Ribs, Arizona” [Extended Family Series]

“Dave Drake The Slave Potter, Saguaro Ribs, Arizona” © Stu Jenks 2021. 88 inches tall.

 

Price: $695, shipping included. Simply contact me via my email address at [email protected] or Facebook message me, if you would like to purchase one of my pieces. Payments can be made with Paypal, Venmo or credit card with Square. All pieces are signed with its title, and can be hung from the wall.

 

This is from Dave Drake's wikipedia page:

"David Drake (c. 1800 – c. 1870s), also known as "Dave Pottery" and "Dave the Potter," was an American potter and enslaved African American who lived in Edgefield, South Carolina. Drake lived and worked in Edgefield for almost all his life.

Drake produced alkaline-glazed stoneware jugs between the 1820s and the 1870s. An enslaved African American, he often signed his works "Dave." He is recognized as the first enslaved potter to inscribe his work, during a time when most enslaved people were illiterate, often forbidden from literacy, and anonymous. Drake inscribed his work with poetry, often using rhyming couplets, as well as his signature."

 

Leonard Todd, an descendant of one of Dave's slave owners, wrote a book about the potter. There is some controversy around some of the facts of his life represented there, but it's a lovely book, written by someone who appears to care deeply about Dave.

Dave until recently was known only as "Dave The Slave Potter" or "Dave", not using his last name, given the cruelty of his first owner, Harvey Drake, but since in a census of 1870, Dave used the name "Dave Drake" to represent himself so he could vote, most folk now use his full name.

Dave, like all enslaved people in the South, experienced many horrors and terrible loses. Even though firm facts are hard to come by, it appears Dave's wife and children were sold away from him and shipped to Louisiana. He lost a leg at some point, stated by some that he lost it when he fell asleep on a railroad track after drinking, but it's just as likely he was tortured by one of his owners, and lost his leg due to that injury. Cutting off legs, hands and fingers was common place, back then, for slaves who 'misbehaved.' His last owner, Lewis Miles, doesn't appear to have been that horrible and allowed Dave to write poetry and one-liners on his pots, even though it was very much against the law at the time.

One of the sadness lines on one of Dave's pots is "I wonder where is all my relations. Friendship to all and every nation," alluding to how friends and family of enslaved people were sold away from each other, never to see each other again.

I was fortunate to see one of Dave's large jars in a show here in North Carolina a few years ago. I can't remember the inscription exactly but the line on the jug mentioned how 'Christmas is the saddest time of the year.' That was because slave owners gave each other slaves as Christmas gifts, callously breaking apart families, giving children away from their parents, separating husbands and wives. Slaves were not people. They were property. Frankly, this sad history still echos in the land around here, in North Carolina, where I live.

In spite of some of its apparent errors, Leonard Todd's book Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of The Slave Potter Dave is a joy to read, and a tome filled with sadness and beauty. I highly recommended it.

My large wall piece here mirrors the size and strength of the man, the sculpture being over 7 feet tall. At the bottom of the old Saguaro rib, it is missing one of its 'legs', honoring that Dave threw pots with only one leg, having another person kick the wheel for him.

This piece of art is very meaningful to me, hanging proudly in my garage workshop. However I would be happy to sell it, and part with it, so that it can be seen by others in person.

Ironically, pots and jars of Dave's that sold for only a few dollars and cents during his lifetime, are now selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars, one jar bought by a museum at auction in 2020 for $369,000. Yeah. I know.

Thousands and thousands of pottery pieces were produced by slaves in the 18th and 19th century in the South. Luckily, Dave Drake's last slave owner, Lewis Miles, allowed him to write on his pots. And happily Dave knew how to read and write, and he knew how to turn a phrase.

No photo was ever taken of Dave. We know he was a big man.

He was a large man in height and size, and a large man with a very big heart.

God bless you, Mr. Drake.

(And I'm fully aware that in your lifetime, you never ever called "Mr. Drake." But you should have been.)

#dave, #daveslave, #davepotter, #extendedfamilyseries, #stujenks