Tag Archives: Black Hills

Running Through Sheets

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Dear Reader,

Did’ja ever run past Mrs. Tackaberry’s house where the Chow Chow dogs charge the fence to eat kids? Then run down the sidewalk into the Thompsons’ big backyard where clotheslines are strung all over, and the bright, white sheets are waving like sails and the colored clothes are snapping in the wind?

We ran with arms outstretched through the sheets as they wafted over us. Then Mrs. Thompson, who worked all Monday, washday, to get the clothes out in the sun, would chase us away.

Hot day, boys running
Into wind-whipped, bright white sheets.
Dodging colored clothes.

We lived a mile high in the Black Hills and the air was clean, the sky pure blue, and the grass bright green. The sky, the grass, and those colored clothes whipping and snapping in the wind are my early memories of color.

Clothespins and clotheslines,
Smooth, clean sheets across my face.
Smell of fresh laundry. 

Rhino Color Wheel

The rhino color wheel was designed like a child’s toy, and the center “fan” is an intense but dark color wheel of primary and secondary colors. The horns are also of high intensity but isolated and brighter; they’re like handles for throwing the toy in a game.

I start each blog with a color wheel because, for me, it symbolizes the Bauhaus, about which Mies van der Rohe said: “The fact that it was an idea, I think, is the cause of this enormous influence the Bauhaus had on every progressive school around the globe.
Only an idea spreads so far.”

I was five years old when running through the sheets and didn’t know, or care, that the Bauhaus had been closed for five years and many of the famous instructors had fled Germany to America, where they re-opened the school.

Twenty years later, I was immersed in Johannes Itten’s color system, refined by Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Josef Albers, who fortunately organized it into a cohesive method. I have studied, taught and used this system for the past 55 years, and it allows me to organize, innovate, experiment, and be more than happy with the surprising results.

Abstract #1

This nostalgic image is my version of Mrs. Thompson’s backyard. Full of color and white sheets, all waving, and snapping in the wind on a hot, clear summer day.

I cut a couple hundred shapes from museum (mat) board, without a plan or intention, and put them aside. Later, I paint them in many colors, again not knowing how I’ll use them, and put them away in a box.

When I get around to assembling them into a composition, it’s like I’ve found a treasure trove that someone has prepared for me. I move the colored shapes around for a couple of days and finally glue them down and varnish them for protection.

Feathers in the Wind

In my art I try to tell stories about seasons, conditions of age, heat, cold, and, in this case, wind. The feathers are old, nearly blown apart by the wind, left behind, and are somewhere where no one ever sees them. They’re fugitive, and they’ll be gone soon.

Old feathers out there,
Torn apart by the hot wind.
Are past life’s treasure.

I used a number of techniques in this sculpture. I painted a heavy, impasto background, brushing, sponging, splattering, and oxidizing the various elements. As before, I cut, manipulated, painted, and assembled them, in that order. It’s always a challenge and
an adventure.

Hands covered with paint.
Thrilled by color on paper.
I need a bourbon.

I’m never content with what I know,
only with what I can find out. 

Thanks for visiting me…

leo

Rhino Color Wheel is $1000.

The abstract is $500.  A similar one, Clouds, is available at the Cut, Bend, Fold, ColorColorColor exhibit at the Grovewood Gallery.
Japanese Maples in the Wind is $2,450 and is at the Cut, Bend, Fold, ColorColorColor exhibit at the Grovewood Gallery.

A Summer Day, Work & Play

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Dear Reader,

May 25th. I remember anticipating the coming summer vacation when in the 4th, 5th, and 6th grades. Shoes and shirts off, strap overalls. No underwear until school started in the autumn. Keystone, SD, in WWII was a dream for boys. The Black Hills were our playground with the granite mountains, ponderosa pines, streams and lakes, all in sight of Mount Rushmore.

Playtime was precious because the men had gone to war, and we were left to take up the slack. We had chores, but not one of us felt put upon. I fed chickens, gathered eggs, cleaned the coop, slopped the pigs (I was scared to death of the big pigs), sawed logs with a small, one-man crosscut saw, split the wood, and put it in a wheelbarrow. I wheeled it across a wide farmyard, across the creek and into our house and my grandfather’s house. I had my own small axe, which I threw until I broke the handle.

I had to fill the wood-box for the cook stoves and for the pot-bellied heating stoves in both houses. That was a lot of sawing, splitting and wheeling for a little kid, around eight to ten trips in all. If you didn’t finish, you would be out there in rain or snow until you did. A few of the boys had cows to milk, butter to churn, and horses to take care of on top of everything else.

Guernsey Cows

In spite of the work, we always fished, hiked and climbed those granite giants. This cow color wheel is my symbol of those days and how we felt about life. The colors include the three primaries yellow, red and blue as well as the secondary hues orange, violet and green. All are at full intensity (purity), as bright as a bunch of balloons.

I put black spots on the cows because I always liked the black-and-white Guernsey cows best. We didn’t know about cow tipping, but we did know about dried cow-pie tossing, especially at each other. A laughing boy’s organic frisbee.

Vladimir&Estragon

These figures were done for the run of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” for which I had done the set. Vladimir and Estragon remind me of us boys waiting for summer vacation, which, like Godot, never seemed to come. Sometimes the things you really crave never show up; I work in the moment and stuff shows up.

The figures are roughly sketched and then drawn with a knife, cutting them from museum board, which is usually used for acid-free mats. The strips are torn from waste paper; I save every scrap that I think has possibilities. I want the striping to look unplanned, with great variations in texture. The colors are random, but there is always play between warm and cool, dark and light, bright and neutral. The color scheme is dark, which enhances those variations and comparisons; I quit when it yells at me to stop.

It’s as if my design and color knowledge were in a fanny pack, and when I need a solution and reach for it, it’s always there. Serendipity is my guide, creating life as I want it to be. Whatever happens should happen naturally.

The boy, Pozzo & Lucky

Here is the rest of the cast of “Godot” on a dark background of neutral burnt orange, dry-brushed over a deep forest green with some black in it. There are the boy, Lucky, and Pozzo. I think of them as Jack, Raymond and Jim, or any of the boys in Keystone.

Sadly, there are only two or three of us left.

Thanks for visiting me.

leo

The two “Godot” pieces are available for $850 each.
They are varnished, unframed and should remain so.
leomonahan@tds.net

The Grovewood Gallery is now representing me in the Asheville, NC area

Vladimir