Memorial to a Friend and Mentor

I wrote this memorial a year ago about a loss that occurred some years before. I offer it as a reminder to us all relating to those persons who have most influenced our lives as artists.

I worked up enough courage to send my manuscript of nine short stories to Winston Weathers, a professor of creative writing retired from Tulsa University. He already had read one of the stories and had offered the suggestion that I might write a collection stories about my character Miss Shinti. He thought they could be illustrated with ink drawings. Now I wanted to hear his response to the whole collection I’d worked on for over two years. I looked forward to more advice from this man who graciously encouraged my writing efforts.

I met Mr. Weathers back in 1997, introduced by Roy Griggs, the Senior Minister of the church where I directed the music and fine arts programs. Griggs wanted me to meet him because of my writing, and besides Weathers and his partner of forty years and I and my wife of nearly thirty years lived in the same building. The introduction was a spur-of-the-moment thing, the two of us stopping by Weather’s condo just minutes after Griggs had phoned him. I met the professor who was also a William Blake scholar and a published poet and had taught generations of writers beginning in the 1960s. The conversation was friendly and revealed an older man, short in stature, with grey hair, horn rim glasses, a full beard, and genteel ways. He greeted me with humor and warmth.

A couple of weeks later Winston invited Myrna and me to come down the two floors to their condo for afternoon tea. We did so and enjoyed his hospitality and conversation, and received as a present his book on Angels that he told us had been reprinted several times and had been translated into several languages. A few months later my wife and I separated; a few weeks after that I received another invitation to tea. This time I met his partner Joseph Nichols, a retired IBM engineer, and glimpsed a fine relationship that had grown rich with age. The men told of their current project of taking a photograph of the sunrise each day for a year. I saw the tripod on their east-facing balcony on the fourteenth floor. They showed me their recently acquired computer and TV service that allowed them to change back and forth from one to the other without even getting out of their easy chairs. I thought about the advantages of partnering with a computer expert. For Winston old-age convenience wasn’t the only advantage. His partner had published the poet’s many chapbooks. I came away from this afternoon tea with one of those chapbooks in hand.

Then there was another invitation for afternoon wine. This time I came home with a volume of short stories and a story about the book. In 1970 Weathers’ collection of short stories, The Lonesome Game, was reviewed in the Literary Supplement of the Sunday New York Times, an honor that is still considered one of the most important things that can happen to a writer. The story about the book was that not one person on the faculty at Tulsa University even mentioned their colleague’s good fortune, not even a comment from the Dean. Winston was sure the lack recognition stemmed from homoerotic references in the book. I read the eleven stories. The homosexuality was so delicately presented that no one in the 1990s would even raise an eyebrow.

Some weeks later I returned to the apartment downstairs. This time Winston congratulated me on my article about a friend who died with AIDS, a short piece that had been published in the church newsletter. A few weeks later I moved to Denver.

Winston and I corresponded. A couple of years later I sent him a manuscript. He responded encouragingly, saying it was publishable as is, suggesting a publishing house, bemoaning that he no longer knew the editors there (a problem of retiring and growing old I assumed), and warning me not to spend the profits before the checks arrived because most deserving manuscripts never get published. Getting published comes from a stroke of luck in timing, he told me, and explained how the process works. He also said he’d be pleased to write a piece for the cover if the book did reach publication. I felt honored and followed his advice sending the manuscript to agent after agent. I spent none of the anticipated income. None ever arrived.

We wrote more, he telling me about illnesses, new projects, and art displays seen at local galleries and museums. I told him of my work, writing, and new experiences. He was the one who told me to turn one of my memoirs into a short story. It had reminded him so much of the kind of stories the New Yorker used to publish. I again followed his advice and turned my focus toward short stories. Eventually I sent him the nine-story manuscript Miss Shinti’s Debut, humorous stories of a miniature poodle who loved to dance.

About a month later the package was returned by his sister with the sad information that her brother had died. The package included a copy of an article written about him. Although I felt sad at his death, I was even more distressed that the obituary didn’t mention his survival by Joseph, his partner for nearly fifty years. I realized how fortunate I felt not to be living in Tulsa. Apparently Winston knew exactly what he had written in his book of stories The Lonesome Game.

In the following months I thought a lot about this man who had so encouraged me and I reread the letters he had sent. In one of his last notes he told of a textbook he had written, An Alternate Style: Options in Composition (1980, Boynton/Cook Publishers), that after nearly thirty years of being published was going out of print. I thought: I want that book, so I inquired at a used bookstore in my neighborhood. Online they found the book and another one. The one I wanted was going for $165; I bought the other one for about $15. (Now the former book new is $568.) Still I searched shelves at second hand stores and the catalogues of libraries. Even though I couldn’t find the book, I Googled his name and found plenty of references to it. I learned that Winston Weathers had introduced what became known as “Grammar Two” and came to appreciate much more about his notable influence on writing and on the teaching of writing. From my searches I gathered ideas for my own literary experiments.

I wonder how I would have responded to him and his advice had I known that he was much more than the nice man downstairs who engaged me in conversation, served me tea and cookies, encouraged me to write, and gave me literary presents. I could have dropped his name in my query letters had I also known he for years had been a literary agent. But would I have redoubled my effort to be a better writer? I worked at that anyway, but surely I would have asked him more questions. I hope he never thought I was uninterested. I continue my life and my writing life always mindful of and deeply influenced by this fine man and neighbor. Far beyond the composition of these few lines about meeting and barely coming to know Winston Weathers, I want all my writing somehow to honor him.

Denver, 2013

Finally!

Finally I have completed my collage, the one I've referred to before, that thrilled me with its content and stalled me in it's execution. Finally it's done and now waiting on the purchase of a piece of glass to complete its framing. I promised to show it to a friend tomorrow evening. Hope that's enough stress to move me!

But the artwork itself is what I am most focused on. In the past I made Artist Trading Cards by printing on maps. I'd print a cut of a Ute petroglyph on a Colorado map or an Osage petroglyph on a Missouri map. Then I wanted to see if I could do something larger--well actually I had a larger petroglyph print I wanted to mount on a larger map. So...

I gathered my pieces: a road map, several prints of the petroglyph in its strangely altered state, a quotation from William Clark's Journal, and my wits. I arranged my equipment and media products: glue, brayer, brushes, gesso, acrylic paints, India ink, stylus, a photo of native grasses of Missouri, a sample of early 19th century cursive handwriting, and about a gallon of piping hot coffee and my mug. 

I started the process--actually many starts and stops lasting over several weeks. (I'm ultimately a multi-tasker.) I mounted the map so the snaking Missouri River lies near the top of the ground. I watered down the white glue and spread it on the mat board and map, rolled the map onto the ground smoothing out bubbles with a brayer, and pressed it between waxed paper to dry while weighted down by big art books. When it was dry I looked at it again and again. Finally I brushed on water-thinned gesso leaving the riverbed unpainted. Several times I changed my mind about which print to collage into the piece. Finally I glued on a print made on translucent paper I thought might let some of the map features--colors and lines--show through. I placed it on the left-hand side below the river, added the box to the circle like in Leonardo DaVinci's study of human anatomical proportions, and decided to paint the native grasses on the right-hand side. 

I painted any number of samples of the grass cluster I would use. I wanted to represent the tall grass prairies common to the area in Lewis and Clark's 1804 explorations on their westward trek up the river. I mounted the print and painted in the grasses. Then I added a quote from the journal around the print. In order to represent the measurement obsession of both the European Renaissance and the exploring spirit shown in mapping rivers and otherwise measuring the newly-acquired Louisiana Purchase, I added the compass points and measurements Clark recorded for the day he also drew the "paintings and carveings" [sic] on the limestone cliff. For balance I drew in another figure--a snake from another Missouri petroglyph and added Clark's comment about how the place where he saw the petroglyphs was "a den of Rattle Snakes." Finally I was happy and have put to rest another piece of art. 

"Taking Measure" mixed media with collage by Phillip Hoyle

One of my art teachers, Polly Hammett, observed that my starting point in art seems usually to be content--in this case a fascination with petroglyphs, Lewis and Clark, 19th century mid-western experience, interaction of Native and Euro-Americans, maps, and so forth. It's no wonder this piece took so long to complete. Now off to another task--oh the framing.

First Flowering

The weekend snow wreaked havoc on blooming trees and bushes, trashed bulbs and ground cover, just when the color transformation of spring was well underway. That seems to be a feature of spring in Colorado with its ping ponging warmth and chill, sun and clouds. The high elevation makes the almost daily drop of 30 degrees F deadly for some blossoms. Every time I hear someone griping about it or hear myself saying something similar, I wonder why we are surprised. As children we used to chant “Rain, rain go away, come again some other day.” Yesterday it was snow.

Cacti Artist Trading Cards by Phillip Hoyle

I am reminded that of all the figures I have ever drawn the most successful have been floral. The first things I drew as an adult were ink renderings for newsletters or brochures. I was surprised I could do it. I drew a poinsettia in a pot, then a yucca in bloom along a walkway and gate. Over the winter I have drawn many, many floral images, mostly for Artist Trading Cards. I drew flowers, cacti, trees, and bushes with the goal of simplifying each to fewer and fewer lines, an experiment in abstraction. I’ve enjoyed the experience. My favorite images have been grasses. Last week I started painting grasses, native grasses of Missouri for a collage with mixed media project. 

Grass studies in acrylic paints by Phillip Hoyle

Along the way I found out how nicely acrylic washes paint on mixed media paper, particularly the Strathmore mixed media 140 lb. 400 series paper my friend Sue encouraged me to buy when they were on sale (two tablets for the price of one). I bought the best quality vellum finish which takes the paint beautifully leaving the clear, sharp edge of each blade of grass. I painted with small angular shader brushes and with a variety of green shades eventually mixing some of the shades.

I painted over a white washed map for my ultimate project, the one I failed to finish before last week’s posting. I’m still not done with it and promise to show the whole thing as soon as I’m satisfied with it! In the meantime you get to see these grasses.

I like painting grasses because they never call for a lawn mower to be wheeled from the garage and pushed noisily around the yard. I really like art and artifice!

Denver 2014

It Didn't Work

This is not the figure I was working with this week but it is from a site in
mid-Missouri not far from where the one I was working on originated.
These two and several other designs were recorded in the Lewis and Clark
Journals from their 1804 trip across the northern plains and mountains
to find a way to the west coast. I imagine this piece pictured here as a
dancing shaman with deer antlers.

Our art projects don't always follow the plans we make. 

Sometimes I feel like they never do quite work in the way I had envisioned. The materials don't seem to cooperate, or I can't find the correct image, or I don't get it placed on the ground properly (meaning to my satisfaction). Life is that way; so is my artwork.

I set out this past week to complete a couple of collages I had in mind and had been collecting the items I was planning to use. I did some research on some images I intended to paint in the mixed media pieces. I prepared the boards I was using as the ground. The projects continued even though I had many, too many, interruptions with family matters, birthdays, dinners out, visitors in, and just too many social opportunities to which I felt obligated. Life's that way too. 

Anyway I will write about that process and include pictures of the finished works next Monday morning. Wish me well.

The Memory of Words Past

Mixed media painting after a Ute petroglyph
by Phillip Hoyle

This little story could be of interest only to writers or to students of aging. Here’s how it goes. 

So at age sixty-four I have just finished writing a novel, a book of over 50,000 words. I have been pondering the future of the manuscript and in so doing decided to ask several people to read it to see if it makes sense, holds together, bores, or entertains. While waiting for their responses, I’m trying to plan creative ways to reread it in an attempt to make sure I will not send a possible agent or publisher a work that seems unpromising. A tactic I learned from my daughter-in-law Heather is to mark all “to be” words, changing them into something active unless they present no alternative. My own idea is to check the use of all, uh, what’s the word? Uh, that kind of word I have sometimes had trouble with. This is awful. Not only do I have trouble selecting the right one of these words; I cannot even think of the name for the type of word. Am I losing my mind? That’s not beyond possibility given my age.

I recall after doing so well in freshman written composition 101 and sophomore and junior ancient Greek, I went for years without naming parts of speech or grammatical stuff even though I was writing on a regular basis. When I entered graduate school I was surprised that I didn’t have facility with that vocabulary anymore. When I heard my professors talking about word use, metaphor, participles, and the like, I realized I’d have to review things I learned in junior high. And now again, after years of writing daily, I cannot think of some simple grammatical concept I studied in Latin, Spanish, Greek, French, and English! 

Perhaps I can discover my lost word if I begin writing about words. So I have noun and verb, subject and predicate. I know objects, direct and indirect. There are past and present participles which are verbal adjectives and gerunds which are verbal nouns. Of course I know conjunctions: how could I ever forget PBS’s “Conjunction junction, what’s your function?” But I have forgotten the elusive word that started all this. What is the term for words such as over, under, above, through, and behind? What is the word sometimes connected with places, actions, characters, things, and so forth. I want it to begin with the letter c or p but don’t remember. I do recall how the selection of the correct word has sometimes seemed a challenge. I can misuse them, thus my impulse to have Heather check them in my manuscript, but I can’t ask her to since I don’t recall the word. It would be embarrassing since she teaches writing. I have to get it. Through, beyond, beside and so forth are examples, but I cannot recall the grammatical name. 

I had a problem with them in Greek; back then I believe it was because I couldn’t recall the right Greek word that in English often serves as a prefix, for example “meta.” Did it mean through or after? See, it still confuses me. I‘ll work at this and will probably go upstairs to read Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. Surely that old standby will instruct me. Pronouns, personal pronouns, articles, modifier, adjective, adverb…. Still the word I’m searching for doesn’t arise from the grammatical murk of my befuddled brain, but I’ll keep at my memory quest.

The words describe the relative position of things. There it is, finally: position; preposition. I never thought of this, but the word describes its function. It’s the word at the beginning of a phrase (of course, a prepositional phrase) that tells the relative position of the expression it modifies. I was pretty sure I could recall this word, my attempt stimulating the bank of grammatical words and giving synapses time to connect. I like that. Somehow the recollection of this word seems hopeful, as in: I still know what I know; I still have a functioning brain. 

A question of an old person: Could loops in the aging sensory and memory system be analogous with (is it ‘to’ or ‘with’?) the proliferation of capillaries in the aging circulatory system? It’s a thought, but I recall I was only twenty-seven years old when I first realized I couldn’t recall such grammatical terms. That really surprised me for I had been out of undergraduate school only four years and worked among college educated middle and upper-middle class folk. In four years, I neither heard nor made in conversation even one reference to grammar! This phenomenon of forgetting terms reminds me of my current need to say the name of a muscle at least once a week or I’ll be unable to find the word when I am trying to explain something to a client. Now that list of terms I memorized in my fifties. Should I find that consoling? But lists of words I memorized in junior high or even earlier and have used for decades? Why should they disappear? Oh well, I’m just happy they are still available, even if my search for them takes me into memories and the like. Someday (soon?) I’ll start forgetting what I’m searching my mind for but hopefully will enjoy tours of my past as I follow loop after loop through my tiring brain. I hope I find my past as entertaining to me as I hope my novel will be to others.

Denver, 2012

Farmer Mike

Acrylic washes on paper by Phillip Hoyle
after a Navajo petroglyph design

As a child I listened again and again to the story of the country mouse and the city mouse on the 78rpm recording Mom bought us kids. Neither city nor country mouse understood how the other could bear to live where it did. I dubbed myself a city mouse; actually I preferred the designation city slicker. Even though I’d had early childhood fantasies of farming with my grandpa, by high school I knew better about myself. I liked country scenes but not country life. I couldn’t imagine farming as a vocation; my early-formed citified sense of myself was too strong. I didn’t even want to live in the country, let alone farm the fields. I needed something else for myself, something visionary, urban, and arty.

In adult life I enjoyed living in ever-larger cities until we ended up in Mid-Missouri, a young family with two children living outside the city limits. The town wasn’t all that large (under forty thousand) and the country seemed lonely and deserted to me. Even though I was astounded with the views of ridges and hollows swathed in morning mists, sunrises and settings of amazing hues, and an abundance of multi-shaded green grasses and trees, I was nervous the whole time we lived out there. I locked doors and wondered who had just driven by on the road and why. My country-reared wife thought it was funny given that all the years we lived in cities I had rarely locked doors. I just felt uneasy in the country, like if I needed help, no one would hear my cries. And yard work seemed too much like farm work for the lawn was way too large.

As a parent I wanted the best for my kids; wanted them to have full, wonderful lives. I didn’t push them towards anything particular, but I did harbor distrust of some lifestyles and occupations. My daughter seemed to like living in Missouri. She has lived there most of her life and—like her dad—seems to prefer living right in town, close to work, close to schools, close to the library, close to her friends, and close to neighbors. My son Mike has lived most of his adult life between Colorado and Missouri. Well, listen, I’ll tell his story from my parental point-of-view.

The artist and musician emerged early in my son Mike’s life. He had a beautiful singing voice, loved to dance, and drew and painted with exceptional talent for a youngster. I was pleased he might become an artist, something my father had cautioned against. I could easily imagine a life in the arts as being a fine choice for my son.

But Mike liked outdoors activities as well as music and art. Unlike his sister and his parents, Mike became a country mouse. I wasn’t surprised. I’d known for years the little boy who adored his farmer grandpa Vance, who was even built and looked like him. I’d known the kid who backpacked, canoed, and explored caves. I’d known the teenager who in his old Chevy van went off to the farm to help his uncle plant corn and then returned for the harvest. I’d known the young man who later returned to the farm with his growing family to work for his uncle. I’d known the young man who moved to a commune where he raised organic carrots to sell in the commune store. Of course, he did lots more there: taught art in the commune school, fixed things around the place’s several houses, but he also repaired fences, helped with livestock, planted, weeded, and harvested. You know, farm stuff. Still, I’d persisted in thinking of Mike as a husband and dad, an artist and musician, and of course, my son.

After a year at the commune the family returned to Missouri where they lived in the country adjacent to a national forest. There they raised chickens and goats and a garden. Michael found a job at a native plants nursery some thirty miles away, down near Brazito. There he kept machines running, helped harvest prairies, sorted seed, assisted customers, and eventually planted and transplanted the great variety of flora, and coordinated the work of the other employees. His family moved into town to cut down on the commute. Then, about four years ago, the firm’s beautifully-illustrated, full-color catalog listed my son as the nursery’s Farm Manager. Heather, his wife, told me Mike was terribly embarrassed. She was proud of him and entertained by his modesty. I still enjoyed his music making and his painting, still thought of him in those terms. 

Last fall Mike told me that the past couple of years he’d been taking trailer loads of native plants and seed to a farmers market in St. Louis. Then he and his family started searching for a country house to buy. With the generous help of a family friend, they bought one on twenty acres—a steal of a deal—and prepared to move back to the country.

I planned a trip to celebrate the graduation ceremony of two grandsons. During the last phone call before I left on my trip, Mike told me how busy he was and how elated he felt living again in the country. I looked forward to seeing their farmhouse, barn, orchard, and pasture.

“Will you get goats?” I asked.

Michael said, “Probably not.”

I saw the beautiful old house when I went there for the graduation party. Two evenings later I returned and Mike gave me the grand tour. Walking past the garden, he realized no one had gathered the asparagus that morning. After we took a nice basketful back to the kitchen, we put the chickens and ducks into the hen house. In the corral I met the new cow and her calf. By then it was pretty dark; we returned to the house.

The next morning we went back outdoors and walked the pastures. Mike had rented part of his land to a neighbor for a bean field. Mike wanted it farmed for a couple of years to get rid of all the European grasses. His plan is then to seed it in native plants to return it to its old state. He can make more money by harvesting it as native prairie. In fact, he could make a lot more money off it and graze the cow there as well. When we stopped by the corral, Mike showed me his new tractor pointing out its advantages and disadvantages. He spoke of it like my Denver friends talk about their new cars—with pride and great satisfaction although, also like them, saying he paid more than he’d intended.

When we walked through the orchard of pears and apples, peaches and plums, something in his information and in his enthusiasm brought into focus what I’d been hearing for years. Mike was becoming a farmer—a real one who loved to plant and harvest, to feed himself and others with the fruit of his labor, to become the husbandman of his own Garden of Eden, and to drive his tractor. He had his own acreage, his own place, an image that had also surfaced at times over the years. This man, who as a child had wanted his parents buried so he would have a place to visit them, now had the place, a farm where he could feel secure on the face of the huge and abundant earth and eventually spread his parents’ ashes. The farmer in him was now connected to the soil.

Heather told me how they had felt so wrought up at the realization they were becoming landowners, something they had never really dreamed. Their conceptual solace came in the notion that they were now caretakers of a bit of the earth put in trust to them. And they are both caretakers: she of the animals, he of the land and plants. With this in mind, they’ve become farmers as well as musicians, dancers, painters, and writers. Now I am a farmer’s dad.

I talked again with Mike on the phone the other day. He told me more about the farm, about pears, nectarines, plums, apples, and peaches. He mentioned several goats and bees too. The garden is producing. They haven’t been able to sell much yet, but thankfully, there is no waste. With five people and all the animals, everything gets eaten. Mike now farms four days at the nursery and three days at home. Heather cares for the cow that produces milk for the table and for making butter and cheese. The orchard is ready to burst even though it is just a fraction of what it had been years ago. The bees are making honey. The hens and ducks are about ready to start laying eggs. And to my deep joy and his, farmer Mike, my son, continues to paint and to play his guitar, sometimes even to his goats.

Denver, 2011

Self-Taught

As I wrote last week, I have been making prints of a new
lino-cut I made. I hung two mixed media pieces in the
Colorado Mountain Art Gallery in Georgetown and am
still messing around with more of the prints. I don't know
how much the messing has to do with being an
"under educated artist!"

In so many ways I feel like a self-taught artist. I say this not to excuse or over-praise myself. It’s just that way. Here’s one instance of the situation that sometimes is a problem. 

A few years ago when in my writing I realized I was working on a novel and not simply the collection of short stories I had imagined, I came to the awful realization that although I had read hundreds of novels and recalled from them plenty of characters, scenes, and situations, I had never seriously studied the novel as literature, had never read one under the tutelage of a professor, and had never analyzed the plot, character, or even writing style that makes some stories work so well. So with M.H. Abrams' Glossary of Literary Terms in hand, I set out to learn about these things. Using his articles on various story-related concepts, I began analyzing short stories; then I turned my attentions to the novel. I would read a novel and if I liked it enough would select one aspect of it to further study. For example, in one novel I compared and contrasted the opening sentences of each chapter. In another book I found and compared the contents of each place the author changed from present tense to past. In yet another novel I searched to find the dramatic turning points in the main character’s transformation. I went on to analyze how secondary or even one-dimensional characters entered and left novels. I was serious in my pursuit of this knowledge.

Then I turned to books I’d read in the past that seemed somewhat like the book I was writing. I analyzed The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin, Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, and House Made of Dawn by M. Scott Momaday. Somewhere along the way realized I had mostly read novels to enjoy exotic and unusual experiences and to find out what happened. This proclivity was bolstered by my habit of reading murder mysteries in which the big task is to figure out ‘who dun it’ as if that were the whole point of reading stories. That seemed my dominant approach. Finally I turned to Ethan Mordden and reread and analyzed several of his Buddies cycle that opened with what seemed to me appropriately titled I’ve a Feeling We’re Not in Kansas Anymore. I liked novels that told the stories of many different people. My novel search for understanding was moving me far away from how I had read them before and, like Mordden’s title far away from all my home state represented. And then there was the really big question: why was I trying to write a novel and how could I do it without making a big fool of myself?

I kept at it subjecting my writers group to my chapters. I read and re-read the manuscript to understand what I had done and what I had yet to do. It’s still in that phase a couple of years beyond asking a few folk to read it and critique it. Perhaps this coming summer would be a good time to finish it up. The action of the novel took place one summer. I guess this summer is as good as any other and better than most. Then I’ll find out if I made a fool of myself or not! If I have, I'd better sign up to work with a teacher.