Journal: An Online Notebook Updated By The Artist
Posts related to Wallace Stevens
2011-09-24 09:13:49 | Dust and Shade: Drawings by Charles Ritchie
(above) Works in progress photographed in the artist’s studio before framing, July 2011. These drawings, now complete, are to be featured in the exhibition at Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Fall 2011. For a discussion of the star map pictured, see journal entry for 17 February 2008. Dust and Shade: Drawings by Charles Ritchie In recent years I’ve gravitated towards the writings of Wallace Stevens. For me, unraveling Stevens’ poetry often requires many readings over extended periods. As with the best drawings and paintings whose secrets unfold slowly, I covet the instants when the obscurity flickers into legibility. Not long ago I approached the end of one of Stevens’ great poems, An Ordinary Evening in New Haven. The final lines of the poem leapt at me, reviving sensations I experienced while making recent drawings. The following three lines are the poet’s words that struck home: It is not in the premise that realityIs a solid. It may be a shade that traversesA dust, a force that traverses a shade. Graphite and conté crayon have become increasingly important for me as material, cultivated as a slow buildup of powdery shadings. Moreover, I’ve come to love their transitional effects; the shadowy granularity of conté crayon and the mercurial reflectivity of graphite. I often combine these friable media, using them in concert with other media as well. To my mind, Stevens attempts in his poem to arrest not only the fleeting effects of light and shadow, but stretches to grapple with the ineffability of reality itself. What a goal. I adopted the phrase “dust and shade” as exhibition title and Stevens’ lines inspired the two paragraphs I prepared for the show: “The drawings in this exhibition evolved in front of subjects ...Read More
2008-05-27 04:09:39 | In the Country
Book 130, Entries for 25-26 May 2008 with studies of a tree at midday and the bright star Vega reflected in the pond at night, watercolor, graphite and pen and ink on Arches paper in bound volume, page size 4 x 6″ In the Country I hiked along a freshly asphalted lane through woods and fields past the occasional dirt driveway. Sprays of white blackberry and yellow buttercups brushed my legs. After a long walk the trees opened to a vista of red earth jumbled with roots and stumps. Recent lumbering had left acres of devastation. Beside me of hillock of stumps rose out of the wreckage. I was surprised when a sudden wind seemed to aim right at the point where I was looking. The small cyclone raked a single trunk and the bark scattered all around as if there had been a blast. I was showered in bark. A strange moment; I had to laugh out loud. That evening I stepped out into the clear night; the sky brimming with stars. Yellow Saturn sat beside Reglus in the constellation Leo above. I made my way through the pitch black down a familiar dirt trail to the pond. Feeling the way with my feet, I turned slowly toward the frogs and other creatures clicking, creaking, and shouting in the brush. Moving closer, the sound became so intense it pelted me, shaking my bones. I looked into the pond where bright Vega sat, brilliant, undiminished in reflection. That light left the star 27 years ago, a point near the beginning of my journals. I laughed again and felt a small part of the pantomime. Hats off to Wallace Stevens; see Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, III. ...Read More
2008-04-19 11:24:47 | Wallace Stevens Walking
Photograph of artist Charles Ritchie in front of the home where Wallace Stevens lived in Hartford, Connecticut. The house remains a private residence. Photographer: Samantha Ritchie, August 2004. Wallace Stevens Walking Poet Wallace Stevens has influenced my creative practice. In his early years, Stevens tried journalism and law in New York City but eventually settled in Connecticut to work for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company. Stevens was good at insurance; he spent thirty years in the company and rose to the position of vice-president. Stevens was also good at writing poetry. Wallace Stevens didn’t drive; he walked the two mile stretch to the office and two miles back each working day. On those walks he composed in his head some of the most powerful and significant poetry of our age; perhaps any age. Stevens once said,” It gives a man character as a poet to have this daily contact with a job”. I certainly feel that having a career interpenetrate my artist life has benefited me. I have had the good fortune to do curatorial work for a living. The position has fed my intellectual curiosity, provided high artistic models to follow, and offered financial security. I make the art I want to make; and keep the often-destructive pressure of selling my art for a living at bay. And I have flourished in the time constraints that accompany having two careers and have developed tools that complement the situation; I keep my journal with me at all times; I milk my early morning hours in the studio for all they are worth. And I have benefited from relationships with scores of interesting and wonderful people. Stevens got up early and read; he composed on the streets as he walked (and sometimes at lunch). And when he arrived at his job something about the con ...Read More
2008-03-30 06:18:28 | Night with Orion
(above) Charles Ritchie, Night with Orion (work in progress, 27 March 2008), 11 1/4 x 15″, graphite and pen and ink on Fabriano paper My passion for the constellations of the night sky began as a young child. I learned names and tried to orient myself by their locations very early. Orion was one of the first constellations I grasped and it remains an annual benchmark for me; Orion rising again: it must be winter. Orion setting again; it must be spring. I remember a very cold, starry night in high school walking over to my friend’s house and thinking to myself, I’ll be looking at that same constellation as an old man. Funny, how I think of that almost every time I spy Orion again. It reminds me of the poem Anecdote of the Jar by Wallace Stevens. I buried a symbolic jar walking down the road that night, and from that moment on Orion takes dominion everywhere: I’ve always wanted to engage Orion as a subject in my art, but have had a hard time finding the right context. One evening several years ago, about this time of year when the trees are just about to fill with leaves; I stepped out on my deck and looked up to see Orion hanging in tree branches. I moved from study in my journal to a graphite drawing of the subject whose composition expanded to include the familiar panorama of houses on my street (see Night with Orion, first state, 12 December 2007). The subject is the same as my drawing Blue Twilight, but seen in late winter rather than summer. I’ve been working three years now, building up layers of graphite on my Night with Orion drawing. Just this winter I added another layer to the image; a full winter’s dreams inscribed in tight horizontal bands across the image with pen and ink (see images above and below). This layer of writing added depth and valu ...Read More
2008-03-01 11:05:28 | Flying Home
Book 130, Sketch of northern sky above illuminated towns, 7:20 pm, 27 February 2008. Flying home from a trip this week I leaned my head against the window and drifted, blinking awake occasionally to see the light of the tumbling sun spread into pale rainbow bands above a plain of stratus clouds. I had been reading Jeff Warren’s recent book The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness, a fascinating study about the many levels of consciousness; not limited to waking and sleeping. I must have taken a subliminal cue from my reading because soon I was drifting into the afternoon with closed eyes. When I blinked awake it was darker. The sun had slipped further down and the color bands lifted higher. Another blink and I was gone. I awoke surprised by blackness. At first my disoriented eyes struggled to find anything. Then, out of the darkness emerged the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) balanced by winding stars of the Dragon (Draco). Below, the clouds were gone and I saw the patchy glow of several towns floating in the void. Words popped into my head, “This is where the dragon lives” the opening line of Wallace Stevens‘ poem The Auroras of Autumn. I had the strangest sensation; was I asleep or awake, was this dream or reality, imagined or real? Is this a dragon or is this air? ...Read More