Stu Jenks' Fezziwig Press

Christmas Haiku #38B

Christmas Haiku #38B

A long time ago,

On a cold December night, 

Candles burned for you. 

 

Merry Christmas, everyone. 

Love, and light,

Stu. 

 

(Photograph: "El Tiradito, Tucson, Arizona" (c) 1998, 2022 Stu Jenks. 

"Mr. Zippo (George Blaisdell), Red Cedar, North Carolina" (c) 2022 Stu Jenks

"Mr. Zippo (George Blaisdell), Red Cedar, North Carolina" (c) 2022, Price upon request for the wall piece. 

 

As some of you know, the Zippo lighter was paramount in the development of my artistic vision. In simpler terms, I was a night photographer in the late 1990's, and I was looking for an organic light source to create my flame spirals. The Zippo was it. 

George Blaisdell invented and produced Zippos from 1932 until his death in 1978. After his death, his two daughters, Sarah and Harriet, took over the company. I made this sculpture to honor him and them. 

Truly, if it wasn't for the Zippo lighter, my life would have been very different. Its tall, beautiful, bright flame was the perfect light source for many of my photographs, for over ten years.

I still have one of those two Zippos I owned back them, one given to me as a birthday present from my good friend Micheal Doll. (Thought it would be sweet to give Michael a shout-out)

Enjoy some of these flame spiral images from that time. Photo image rights and prints are always available. And the book Flame Spirals: Journeys Through Nocturnal Photography is available wherever you buy books. 

Flame on, y'all. Have a blessed day and a peaceful night. 

Circles & Spirals: Stu Jenks' Newsletter #10: August 8th, 2022

"Push and Pull" by Hugh McCloud, an image capture from a recent show at Duke University's Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, NC

1) Alexa and I are both on the mend. She's a month out of abdominal surgery and is healing well, even though it will be a long process to full health for her. But she is doing great, and she had a birthday on Sunday. Happy, happy, honey. 

2) This coming Monday, I will have my final radiation treatment. I've had 36 out of 40 Easy Bake Oven sessions as of this afternoon. Frankly, the side effects have been horrendous. I'll spare you the details. Thank f-ing God this will all be over soon. But I'm hopeful that this will have zapped the little bit of cancer that I still had after my radical prostatectomy surgery in 2020.

3) And lastly, I'm pleased and honored to have been accepted into Tohono Chul's show, Elements: Fire. The show will open on August 25th and run through early November. I hope you can get to see it, if you are in the Tucson area. James Schaub, an amazing painter in his own right, is the Director of Exhibitions at Tohono Chul Park. He has quietly championed my work for a good number of years now. Thank you, James, for picking these two pieces for your show. Included below are the vision statements for these pieces and the images themselves. 

That's it for now.

Love you all, and thanks so very much for the prayers and support you have given the Jenks, in this difficult summer for us.

Love, light and luck.

Stu

“Catalina State Park, Arizona (The Ikon)”
11 x 14 inch fiber based gelatin silver print, sepia toned
Edition: 9/25
Taken with a 1954 Rollei medium format camera, using Ilford 400 black and white film.
A time exposure of around 30 minutes, on a full moon night, the light source for the flame spiral, a Zippo lighter.
Printed in the Toole Shed Darkroom in Tucson, by me, in the early 2000’s
Price: $400

    I could tell so many stories about this image: how it was used on a Steve Roach album cover; how it became the logo of the Mythic Journeys conference in Atlanta; how one woman came up to me at an opening and said, “It is so amazing that you were there when THEY came.”; how it’s one of my top five images I’ve sold in my career; and how I’ve enjoyed telling people how I create this flame spiral image, at many open studios and gallery openings.

    Due to limited space, I’ll just tell this one story.

    In 2016, Julie Sasse, the Contemporary Art curator at the Tucson Museum of Art, asked me to show this image as part of her Into the Night: Contemporary Art and the Nocturne Tradition show. I had printed up a three large, 16 x 20 inch fiber based prints of The Ikon over the years, one hanging in the ex-CEO of Krispy Kreme donuts’ home, one stored safely away, and another framed in my studio. The large framed print was given to Julie for her show.

    That summer, a woman I knew only casually, took her godmother to see the Into The Night show. When she came to this image she said to her godmother, “I know that guy.” That started her wheels turning. “I want to get to know him,” she thought. She reached out to me a month later. In December, we will have been married five years. Her name is Alexa McCool Smith Jenks.

 

“DC-10 Spreading Retardant, Dragoon Mountains, Arizona”
4 1/2 x 8 inch archival pigment print
Shot using 70-200 mm IS glass, with Canon 5D Mark II back.
Price: $100

    It’s too bad this image doesn’t come with a soundtrack. I’ll explain.

    A few years ago, a terrible fire exploded near Cochise Stronghold in the Dragoon Mountains of Arizona. I drove down, found a low hill to stand atop of, and waiting for the DC-10s to make their passes.

    (Photographer’s Tip: To take a good picture, go out into the world, find a spot, and wait. Then wait some more. Let the image come to you. Try not to chase it. Just be present in the space. Look, wait, and see what happens. Pop the shutter then.)

    The DC-10s seemed to arrive every 20 minutes or so. I think I was there for an hour and a half. I captured two images that I liked. This is one of them.

    Here’s what you don’t see in the photograph.

    After the planes had dropped their loads, they banked hard to the left and headed back north to replenish and refuel. The little hill I was standing on was right below their flight path. I know they were probably over 100 feet above me, but it sure didn’t feel like it, as the sound and force of their accelerating engines shook my body. It was fabulous, almost as loud as a Social Distortion concert at the Rialto Theatre.

    Almost.

Circles and Spirals: Stu Jenks' Newsletter #9: July 29th, 2022

"Stronghold Dream, Arizona" (c) 2022 Stu Jenks. 

1) Well, not a great month for Alexa and I. Alexa, two weeks ago, had emergency abdominal surgery that was pretty scary. She's on the mend but she lost two weeks of work, in which she didn't get paid. But the pain is getting less, the swelling is down, and she just went back to work a few days ago. (She works from home.)  I'm very happy that it all went well, and her colon is now not obstructed and she is smiling again. 

2) I'm at the end of week six of eight weeks of my radiation. I feel pain down there pretty much all the time. Peeing hurts. No fun. But in two weeks I'm done and hopefully the little bits of leftover prostate cancer will be gone too. 

3) Can't tell you how pissed off I am that the Republicans Senators voted down the veterans burn pit legislation, that they voted FOR a few weeks ago. It appears they voted it down out of spite. Spite. That Joe Manchin came around and will vote for the inflation reduction bill, that will help on climate change, on lowering health care costs and a bunch of other things. They voted it down out of petty spite. Republicans elected officials are just horrible.

I've said this for a long time. We have now two political parties in America: 1) The Democratic Party, who are made up of Democrats, ex-Republicans and Independents, and 2) The Republican Party, made up of fascists, authoritarians, and greedy fucking bastards, who don't care about Democracy or other people. They just about themselves and their wallets. Anyway, same assholes, different day. Vote "D" in November. 

4) Back to Alexa and I. We took a big financial hit because she was sick and I had to be there for her (which I enjoyed) and took time off from my work. (Hadn't worked since the 12th. Back to work now.) We are not completely broke but it's a little tough. If you have some extra couch quarters and want to throw us a fiver, you can donate at my PayPal and/or my Venmo. The login is my email address. [email protected]. Hate to put out the Buddhist begging bowl, but we could use a little help. I know it's tough for everyone. No expectations. Just asking.  

5) Haven't got out much to harvest trees for sculptures and walking sticks, or go hiking around the woods or take any photos, given Alexa and my health issues. I have made a few wall pieces (photos to come), played a little bouzouki, and screwed around on my phone, but that's about it. Wish I had more recent stuff to share artistically, but I just don't right now.

Here are some older photos that may be in an upcoming show in Arizona. Happy people still like my old work. I'll let you know if the curator picks any of my work for the show. 

6) So that's about it. If you have spare denaro, feel free and donate to my PayPal or my Venmo, but mostly just keep us in your thoughts and prayers. The outpouring of love and kindness toward Alexa and her surgical issues on Facebook has been very healing for her and for us, and we thank you, more than we can say. 

7) Lastly, a old friend Rhonda J. died way too young at 52 from a very rare cancer a couple days ago. She was a wonderful woman, always honest, always kind in her entertainingly outspoken way. I'll miss her frank sharing and her devotion to her family, to others and to her own healing. Fly with the angels, Rhonda. 

Love, light and luck, 

Stu

"Wupatki Flame Spiral (Revisited), Arizona" (c) 2022 Stu Jenks. 

"Solstice Rock Flame Spiral (Revisited), Arizona" (c) 2022 Stu Jenks. 

"Growler Mountain Milky Way, Arizona" (c) 2022 Stu Jenks. 

"Valley Of The Gods, Utah" (c) 2022 Stu Jenks. 

Tohono Chul 10 x 10 show 2022

From March 4th until May 29th, 2022, Tohono Chul Park in Tucson, Arizona is having their annual 10 x 10 fundraiser. A ton of art work created by a bunch of artists.

Everything is 10 inch by 10 inch, bagged and boarded, all for the low low price of $100. I have five pieces there. If you don't see the work of mine that you want on display, just ask James or any of the great museum staff and they will help you out. Great people.

10 x 10 helps Tohono Chul and it'll helps me. Good all around. (I get $50, they get $50 for each sale.)

And if you want something specific of mine, you may want to get up there early.

Love y'all.

Stu.

This and that, from my studio...

"Pamela's Baby Rocking Chair, Puckett's Cabin, Blue Ridge Parkway, Virginia" (c) 2022 Stu Jenks.

 

"Boulder Mountain Snow, Utah" (c) 2022 Stu Jenks.

 

"Mars and A Megalith, Avebury, UK" (c) 2022 Stu Jenks.

 

"Avebury Beech Tree Hoop Dance #2, UK" (c) 2022 Stu Jenks.

 

"Marty & Maggie Bare's Graves, Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina" (c) 2022 Stu Jenks.

 

"Moonrise and Venus over Hopi, Arizona" (c) 2022 Stu Jenks.

 

Image capture of William Keith's painting "Mono Lake", North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina" (c) 2022 Stu Jenks.

Hoop Dancing with Vollis Simpson...

"Hoop Dancing with Vollis Simpson, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina" (c) 2022 Stu Jenks.

 

Four different versions, four different dances.

Everything you see is on the digital negative. No layering. Some color enhancement and cropping but that's about it. Battery powered Christmas lights make the hoops. Exposure times between 3 and 10 minutes.

And thank you to the very nice security guard who let me shoot without permission from the museum. Sweet, smart man.

For prints and image right sales, just email me at stujenks at gmail dot com.

Keep your lamp trimmed and burning,

Stu.

A deep dive into my hard drives, and a few new images as well...

"Council Rocks Flame Tower, Dragoon Mountains, Arizona" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

So recently I've been doing deep dives into my hard drives, to perhaps find some images I had overlooked, or reprocess some photos from the past that I can make better. It's been fun.

Here, is a Zippo lighter image, shot at dusk at Council Rocks in Arizona a few years back. (I may need to do more flame tower images here in North Carolina. Hmm.) I popped the color a bit and sharpened the photo a little. I really like this image and this place. It is the place where the Apache chief Cochise lived, and where he made peace with the Americans in the 1870's. I miss Arizona so.

Other old and a few new images are below. If you want a print of anything, reach out.

And may you all have a Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year.

Love y'all.

Stu.

"Shiprock at Dusk, New Mexico" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

"Washington Monument 1961, D.C." (c) Image capture Stu Jenks 2021, photographer unknown, from a postcard.

"Pamela's Baby Rocking Chair, Jesse Brown's Cabin, Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.


"Pamela's Baby Rocking Chair, Brown's Summit, North Carolina" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

"Pamela's Baby Rocking Chair (with pelican), North Topsail Island, North Carolina" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

"A Dartmoor Stream, UK" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

"Scorhill Stone Circle, Dartmoor, UK" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

"The British Oaks in Wistman's Wood, Dartmoor, UK" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

"Crowned Buddha, Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina" (c) Stu Jenks.

"Parvati, Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

"Little Copper Dome, Broad Street, Richmond, Virginia" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

"Mossy Creek Church, The Valley of Virginia" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks. (The place where my fourth great-grandmother Polly is buried, in an unmarked grave)

"Rodin's Burghers, In front of City Hall, in Calais, France" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

"Acis and Galatea, Luxembourg Gardens, Paris, France" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

"Portrait of a woman, outside of Chartres Cathedral, France" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

"The Blue Virgin, Chartres Cathedral, France" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

"St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Cheyenne, Wyoming" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

"The Blue Mary, Parroquia de la Purisima Concepcion, Nogales, Sonora, Mexico" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

"Flame Spiral atop Tumamoc Hill, Tucson, Arizona" (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

 

"Dad Doesn't Leave The House Much Anymore"

"Dad Doesn't Leave The House Much Anymore" (c) Spring 2001, 2010 Stu Jenks

(Pinhole photograph taken six months before Dad died. Exposure time approx. 30 minutes long. Stuart Jenks Sr. died at home on September 3rd, 2001, twenty years ago this week. This story was written in 2010 and edited again today.)

    Dad doesn’t leave the house much anymore.
    “He sometimes goes outside but he rarely stays out,” Mom says. “It’s like he’s given up.”
    It’s been a bad few months. They can’t give Dad the Agent Orange Cancer Cure anymore. Too much of The Big Bad Chemo would kill him outright now. He went to John Hopkins in Baltimore recently and they’ve put him on very experimental cancer therapy which consists of Stuart taking Thalidomide pills. Dad’s now a guinea pig.
    “We’re running out of options,” Dr. Evers, my father’s oncologist, said. My Dad calls him Medger, after the slain civil rights activist. It’s not a compliment, and it's kind of a bad joke. Dad sometimes is less funny than he thinks.
    There’s one more last ditch treatment, they say. Another experimental procedure where they pump a caustic chemical cocktail right into my Dad’s chest. Stuart has to be under anesthesia for this and be closely monitored while they pump in the chemicals. Very experimental. Very risky. A last hope. We’re scheduled to go into the hospital in a few days. I just flew in from Tucson tonight to help as I can.
    Dad’s sitting in front of his mini-TV in the living room. He has on headphones to listen to it, for if he doesn’t, the regular TV speaker blasts out the house. Dad has been losing his hearing for years. He refuses to get hearing aids. He likes hearing less, he said to me, because without hearing aids he can barely hear Mom talk. Stuart fell out of love with Mary years ago, but is too cheap to divorce her. Sadly, Mom is still deeply in love with the man.
    Dad's just sitting there, watching the TV. I walk out onto the screened-in porch, then to the kitchen, then upstairs to my bedroom. I’ve done this circle a number of times tonight. I pass Dad each time, but after our first hand wave of the night, Dad doesn’t look up from the TV. He doesn’t look like he’s paying much attention to the television. Almost like he’s looking right through it. A thousand yard stare, probably not that much different than the one on his face at Iwo Jima in 1945.    
    Without him knowing, I place my pinhole camera, with the shutter open, on a table in the living room. I then go outside to sit on the river pier in the dark. No moon tonight. A half hour later, I come back up to the house. Dad’s still sitting where I left him. I grab the pinhole, place my hand over the aperture hole and take it upstairs to my bedroom. I close the shutter once I’m upstairs.
    A few minutes later, I walk back downstairs to get a snack. I wave at Stuart again. This time he waves back. Dad goes back to looking at the TV. He’s not smiling. He’s not really anything. Like a quiet ghost in the house. Strange from a man who had such a big personality when he was well. It’s like he’s already gone now. I don’t fault him for this. Hell, if I’d gone through almost two years of brutal surgeries and horrible chemotherapies that barely shrunk my tumors, I’d want to be gone too. But I still miss him. And then sometimes I don’t. It’s complicated. He's a retired Marine Corps officer. I'm a woo woo artist. Yeah. Often I feel like I don’t know him at all or he, me. We’ve both tried, but we still don’t get each other. Never really have. It makes sad and a little angry. Mostly it just make me really really sad. You kind of missed out on getting to know your only son, Dad, by having unreasonable expectations of me being just like you.
    I walk back up stairs to my room, stow the pinhole camera away in its bag, and go to bed for the night. This is going to be a hard week.

    [That week, the doctors didn’t even attempt the super-experimental cancer procedure they had planned. They opened up Dad’s chest and found he was full of cancer. It was too late. That was one horrible day. Mom cried. I cried. Dad, to his credit, tried to put on a good face, cracking a few jokes, but he knew. 
    I privately asked the oncologist just how long Dad had. He resisted telling me any estimate. I told him I’m not going to hold him to it. The doctor relented and said, “Three to six months.” Almost exactly 6 months later, Dad died on Labor Day night, with his wife Mary lying beside him. "It was so peaceful," Mom said at the time. We buried him at St. Mary's Whitechapel Episcopal Church on the next Saturday, two days before the world completely changed on 9/11.]

Dad as a young Marine. Photograph probably taken by his mother, Mama Lillie.

Infrared photograph taken of my father in the Spring of 2001 by me.

"Tumamoc Hill Flame Spiral" (c) 2007, 2021 Stu Jenks

December 21st, 2007: The Night of the Winter Solstice

The Mount Lemmon Road was closed at the base. Too much snow for travel to the top for anyone other than residents of Summerhaven. I wasn’t happy about that but I wasn’t that mad either. OK, a little angry maybe, for I do prefer to pray at Solstice Rock on this day and I knew I could make up there in my four-by-four truck, but it’s really only important to me that I pray on Solstice Rock.

God doesn’t care where I am when I do my Big Prayer. Actually, my God doesn’t care if I pray at all. He’s that loving of a guy. So I trusted my gut and headed to Tumamoc instead. It’s around 7 p.m. now. It’s dark up here at the summit but bright as Christmas below. The view from Tumamoc Hill to the East is of the whole Tucson Valley. Tumamoc is literally in the center of the city, a protected nature preserve, two miles east of downtown.

Lights are on in the nearby skyscrapers. I’m guessing that immigrant cleaning crews are emptying the trash on this Friday before Christmas. Semis with red and yellow running lights roar along the Interstate below me. The street grids can easily be seen— Broadway and 22nd Street, even the diagonal Aviation Parkway. Thousands of sepia brown streetlights twinkle below, like an old photograph of a Christmas tree.

The Big Prayer is for Open-Heartedness this year. Unlike other years, I started with myself. I usually end with asking God to hear my personal prayer, but I am pretty annoyed with not being able to get up to Solstice Rock. This then brings up anger and disappointment regarding some friends then some frustration with my family at Christmas Time, and before I know it, I’m not walking up Tumamoc anymore. I’m living in the blind illusion of my own expectations, judgments and thoughts. I become aware of my own insanity about halfway up Tumamoc and say loudly, “God, help me be Open-Hearted to them!” I smile. By the time I reach the summit I have prayed for Open-Heartedness for everyone that I can think of. For Cathy, for many other good friends, for my mother and sister, for some strangers who live just over there, and for the Universe itself.

An Open-Hearted Universe. I’d like that.

I don’t want to leave. It’s so beautiful up here tonight. I take a deep breath and smile. Just a bit longer. The wind picks up, chilling me through my polar fleece. I pull down my Boo Boo hat to warm my ears. I breathe in deeply again. The smell of creosote and mesquite is in the wind, a scent created by yesterday’s rain. The Catalina Mountains loom to the north, capped with new snow. I feel very blessed. Very rich, with little cash in my pocket. Very loved, with no loved ones close by. Very fulfilled, with no personal accomplishments near me.

Time to go. Cathy and I are going to do a bit of Christmas tonight, since I’ll be in Virginia for the holidays. Hope she likes the photograph of Laxmii I made for her. I stand, blow Tucson a big kiss, and head down the hill to my truck.

From my book Flame Spirals: Journeys Through Nocturnal Photography.

 

 

#flamespirals, #stujenks, #tucson, #spirals, #nightphotography