Stu Jenks' Fezziwig Press: Rivers

April 21, 2023

Pamela's Baby Rocking Chair (Tossed About)

These days with my cancer and such, I'm feeling a little tossed about myself.

Love you all.

Stu

Posted at 06:28 PM in Art, Emotions, Greensboro, NC, Love, Pamela's Baby Rocking Chair, Rivers, Sky, Spirituality, Stu Jenks, The Ocean, The South, Virginia | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 07, 2022

Circles and Spirals: Stu Jenks' Newsletter #2: 4/7/22

Hey everyone,

1) Went to SECCA recently (The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem) and saw an amazing show entitled. Black@Intersection: Contemporary Black Voices in Art, curated by Duane Cyrus, a prof at UNC-G. So much great work from all over the world. One of my favorites is "Cupid" by Wolly McNair, out of Charlotte. (A jpeg of this is above) I reached out to Wolly and he is a very sweet and spiritual man. A delight to chat with him on Instagram.

I also went to the Nasher Museum of Art over at Duke a few weeks ago and saw a show about North Carolina Artists Today, many if not most were Black artists.

In three words, It's fucking time.

When I was in art school the big thing was, "Let's promote women artists. The time of white guys only making art and getting it seen should be over." And for the most part it is. It appears in my absence from North Carolina since the early 80's, they have decided it's time to promote artists of color and women artists too, beside just the white guys. I couldn't be happier.

Except for this one little thing. The work by these younger artists is so good and so thoughtful, it makes me want to stop making stuff. That feeling only lasted a day or two, but in the back of my mind, do we really need more me? Perhaps yes, perhaps no, but I'm happy as a clam in cool sand that the art world is including the other 70% of the American population now, not just the white guys.

2) Went to the Dean Dome to watch the NCAA Championship game, but mostly just to see the building from the inside. It is amazing to sit in the stands, for free no less. I left early in the first half of the game, for a number of reasons, a) I really couldn't see the game that well on the four big screens, b) I could hear well either, and c) I had a gut feeling we were going to lose, and I could tell that if UNC lost, it might get ugly here. Not by the students but from the middle aged guys who came that night, who were already angry it appears, I don't know why. I drove home to Greensboro and watched the second half on my TV. Carolina lost to Kansas but it was OK. We beat Duke in the semifinal game and Hubert Davis and all the guys had a great end of their season. Fun fact: I'm now a born again U of A fan. I'm loving me some Tommy Lloyd. Excited about the future of Arizona basketball. And of course I love the Zags. A good year of college basketball. Now onto the NBA. Go Suns.

3) Being poor sucks. Really sucks. I get a small retirement and I'm working part time being a Legal Zoom Monitor but I don't make that much money really. And image and sculpture sales are way down, but I'm still making a little coin from the music online. I'm just poorer than I've been since the 1980's. I have everything I need but I'm not sure where I'm going to get the money to print the new Step Zero book. And I need new glasses. And new shoes. And a tune up for the truck. Heavy sigh. I know as we get older, we live more on fixed incomes and such, but Jeez Louise. I'm not trying to manipulate anyone into giving me money. Just being transparent about what it's like to be a creative person in my late 60s and not having a lot of extra cash and not selling that much. And baby needs a new pair of shoes or rather hiking boots. But if I talk about it, I'll be less depressed about it. I know that. And it reminds me to be grateful for what I have. Unlike the Talking Heads song, this is my beautiful house. This is my beautiful wife.

4) Speaking of beauty, about half of all the houses on our little street have dogwood trees. The street's ablaze with white and pink flowers. It's really nice. I've been more of a Fall and a Winter person in the past, but I think I get Spring now. The trees and flowers and birds are waking up and having sex with each other, so to speak. The robins and bunnies in our backyard certainly are. It's sweet. I've actually named two of the bunnies, who have scars on their bodies so I can identify them. Bruno and Roberta, They are hard to photograph but I'll try and get some pics of them for you in the future.

5) and lastly, I've visited an undisclosed part of the Haw River a couple of times, harvesting some dead Red Cedar wood for my Late Stage Capitalism sculpture series. Don't think I'm on private property, hopeful it's county or state property and I'm just salvaging dead wood and not that much of it, but I do see those no trespassing signs way over there and it doesn't make me happy. I'm positively Native about land ownership. It's good to have a little piece of land to live on and to ranch or farm it, but to individually own large tracts of land for no other purpose then to make money, drives me a little nuts. 42% of the state of Arizona is owned by the federal government, which means I can walk and hike almost all of that. (If you add the AZ Land Trust Land, it's way over 50% I'm sure.) I know I'm on the east coast where white men have owned land, property, women and Africa-Americans for centuries. I know the history. Women? Less ownership for the past 50 years. Blacks? Well, lynching doesn't happen anymore, but we don't get points for that. I digress. No Trespassing signs just piss me off, particularly when I'm in the middle of nowhere, near a river, having walked through spider webs and stickers to get there. I'm a Westerner, a desert rat. I know I'm not in Kansas or the Sonoran Desert anyway. Just trying to find my way in a land that really isn't my home. Gathering four or five cedar sticks, then bringing them home, cutting, sanding and oiling them, and making art from them, helps me get through. Makes me quite happy. And I like giving walking sticks away to people I love too. It does not suck. And boy doesn't my workshop/garage smell great after I"ve been stripping some cedar bark. Lovely.

Life is good, unless I start to think about it too much, but it's good if I feel it. Just feel the feelings and let it go and all that good shit. But that does work. I'm feeling it right now and in the here and now, it's all good.

I have love and life and dogwoods.

Love you all

Keep your lamp trimmed and burning.

Stu

Posted at 12:24 PM in African Americans, Arizona, Art, Business, Hardwood, Love, Mountains of North Carolina, North Carolina, Other Artists, Rivers, Spirituality, Step Zero Series, Stu Jenks, The Late Stage Capitalism Series, The South, The Woods, Travel, Trees, Women Artists, Wood | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 15, 2021

A day at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

All photos (c) Stu Jenks 2021

Posted at 12:17 PM in Art, Black & White Photography, Blue Ridge Parkway, Canyons, Good Folk, Indigenous People, Love, Mountains, National Parks, North Carolina, Photography, Rivers, Sky, Tennessee, The South, The Woods, Travel, Trees, Wildlife | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 25, 2021

"Ararat River Cooper's Hawk"

Posted at 01:40 AM in Birds, Rivers, The South, Virginia, Water | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 24, 2021

Pamela's Baby Rocking Chair, Farnham Creek Tree, Virginia (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

All images on this website can be printed by me on my archival printer, using archival paper, then signed, boarded, glassine-bagged, then mailed to you

8 1/2 by 11s are $45, plus S & H. 13 x 19s are $95, plus S & H. (Image rights are also for sale. Cost of those are specific to the client and the job.) Shipping runs between $10 and $20.

Contact me via email at [email protected], or through Facebook Messenger, if you want to buy something.

Stay safe. Love y’all. Stu.

Posted at 01:26 AM in Pamela's Baby Rocking Chair, Rivers, The Woods, Trees, Virginia, Wood | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 19, 2021

“Horse & Coyote, Cedar Driftwood & Rebar, Rapphannock River, Virginia” (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

“Horse & Coyote, Cedar Driftwood & Rebar, Rappahannock River, Virginia” © Stu Jenks 2021, 33 by 48 by 9 inches.

$800, shipping not included. If you really want to buy it, email me at [email protected] and we'll figure it out. It's not really for sale, but you know what they say when it come to buying art. Give me enough money and it's yours.

I was visiting my friend Brad and Glenn a few months ago in the Northern Neck, and as is customary, I visited the Rappahanock River near their house, specifically a boat ramp with a nice view of the wide water. Since Mom sold the old home place in 2003 in order to survive, only on occasion will the current owner of Ed-Lil let me come down and visit the river on what is now his property. But this boat ramp? It's always there and even though I think it might be on private property, it's not chained or gated. I simply park my Pathfinder and walk down to the water's edge. It's a lovely spot.

Driftwood is not uncommon to find along the river, but most aren't as beautiful as this piece. I picked it up, looked at it from a number of angles, and saw what I wanted to do: drill a very deep hole in it, and mount it in the way that you see here, using a pipe or a rod of some sort.

Easy peasy.

Famous last words.

After two trips to Home Depot, a visit to Harbor Freight, drilling a hole in this piece of wood that was much harder that I thought it would be, and then busting and blooding the heck out of my finger with a sledgehammer, hammering the rebar into the ground, I got the piece up.

I really love the silvery patina on this wood. And yes, it looks like a horse drinking water to some, or a coyote dancing to others, but mostly to me now, I simply see a lovely piece of white bleached wood, that looks like a lovely piece of white bleached wood.

Birds are finding it. Bunnies run by it. Alexa and I look at it from our kitchen window. Makes us happy.

It was worth the busted finger.

Sometimes you have to bleed for your art. I prefer not to, but shit happens.

P.S.: It's been 10 days and my finger is still healing up. Maybe I should have gotten a stitch. Nah.

This last image, I photoshopped out the supporting rebar and some powerlines in the back. Just for fun.

Posted at 01:15 AM in Art, Greensboro, NC, Rivers, Sculpture, The South, Trees, Wood | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 02, 2021

The PBRC: The Staunton River, Virginia (c) 2021 Stu Jenks.

Stopped to take a pee on the way to the Northern Neck. Went over to the boat launch to see the River. Being from Tucson, rivers are magical creatures. Was walking back to the truck when I saw, over there, this space in the trees where I thought the PBRC would look nice, the river out of focus in my mind's eye. Got the chair, placed the shot, took about 15 exposures. Bang. Done. Got back in the Pathfinder and continued north.

No one's going to say I haven't lived an interesting life.

(All images on this website can be printed by me on my archival printer, using archival paper, then signed, boarded, glassine-bagged, then mailed to you

8 1/2 by 11s are $45, plus S & H. 13 x 19s are $95, plus S & H. (Image rights are also for sale. Cost of those are specific to the client and the job.) Shipping runs between $10 and $20.

Contact me via email at [email protected], or through Facebook Messenger, if you want to buy something.

Stay safe. Love y’all.)

Posted at 10:43 AM in Art, Family, Pamela's Baby Rocking Chair, Rivers, Virginia | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 07, 2020

Images From The Holiday Season.

Posted at 11:22 AM in Alexa McColl Smith Jenks, Ancestors, Arizona, Art, Beachs, California, Churches, Colorado River School, Deserts, Good Folk, Love, Mountains of North Carolina, Nature, Night Photography, Nocturnal Photography, North Carolina, Prayer, Rivers, Rocks, Sky, Snow, Stones, Stu Jenks, The Road, The Sky, The South, The West, Virginia, Women | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 13, 2020

Images From Ashe County, North Carolina (& Elsewhere)

Posted at 07:05 PM in Arizona, Dying, Emotions, Good Folk, Mexico, Mountains, Mountains of North Carolina, North Carolina, Plants, Rivers, Rocks, The South, Travel, Trees, Virginia, Weather | Permalink | Comments (0)

March 11, 2019

Cherry Picking Leviticus, as a pdf and as an ebook for only $2.00

My new book Cherry Picking Leviticus is available for only $2.00, at the Fezziwig Press store, both as an pdf and as an epub file. You can also buy other Stu stuff there as well.

And below are some recent images from me. Hope you like. Have a wonderful day, and keep the faith baby, however you do that.

Love and light, Stu.

"Nannie's Mirror: Town Creek Indian Mound, Mt. Gilead, North Carolina" (c) 2019 Stu Jenks. [This structure is a re-creation of the religious building that stood here centuries ago, so I wasn't damaging anything by placing my grandmother's mirror within its ropes. Quite a spiritual place to visit, with the creek over there, the temple up there on that mound and the woods all around. Check it out if you are in the area.]

"Deer Skull along the Ararat River, Virginia" (c) 2019 Stu Jenks. [I found this white-tailed deer skull on the other side of the river from where I took these photos, not far from the grave of J.E.B. Stuart's great-great-grandfather who was murdered (not killed in battle but murdered in his home by a Torie), during the Revolutionary War.

This pristine skull sat atop a tall bluff, near a rusty old Model A Ford car door, both I'm guessing washed down stream during hurricane flooding. It was just sitting, on some grass, like it had been placed there. A lovely and welcome surprise.

"House on Rt. 831, Virginia" (c) Stu Jenks 2019

"The grave of the poet Randall Jarrell, a Quaker Cemetery near Guilford College, Greensboro, North Carolina" (c) 2019 Stu Jenks. [Randall Jarrell's poetry inspired me to be a writer when I was in high school. And yes, I place those flowers there. RIP Randall.]

"Confederate Water Skiers, Mt. Airy, North Carolina" (c) 2019 Stu Jenks [A clandestine image capture of a postcard in a consignment store. Was I going to pay $10 for this creepy postcard? No freaking way.]

"Nannie's Mirror at Turn Four, looking down the front straightaway, Martinsville Motor Speedway, Martinsville, Virginia" (c) 2019 Stu Jenks. [Holy ground to you gear heads out there. And when they aren't racing, you can drive right up to the fence. I kid you not.)

"A Fatal Figure on the wall, after 40 years, Art Lab Building, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill" (c) 2019 Stu Jenks [After all these years, it's still there. Then again, I did spray paint this onto a porous brick wall in 1978, but still.]

Posted at 11:31 AM in Ancestors, Art, Black & White Photography, Books, Business, Civil Rights, Clouds, Current Affairs, eBooks, Emotions, Faith, Fezziwig Press, Good Folk, Greensboro, NC, Highways, History, Hope, Humor, Love, Memoirs, My Grandmother Nannie's Mirror, Nannie's Mirror, Native People, Nature, Night Photography, North Carolina, On The Rez, Other Writers, Pamela's Baby Rocking Chair, Performance Art, Photography, Politics, Prayer, Rivers, Rocks, Sculpture, Spirituality, Stu Jenks, The Road, The Sky, The South, Trees, Trouble With The Law, Virginia, Weather, Wildlife | Permalink | Comments (0)