Puzzled (again)? Blame it on Budapest

 

Well, doesn't everyone recognize this as a finely wrought mold for shaping the elegant brick shown on the left?  And it isn't blame that's in order – but rather cheers of appreciation for my friend Y, who moved to Budapest two years ago.  Periodically, she sends a new image or expedition report that sets off an enthusiastic resonance. (You might remember the "Anonymus" statue – and the ladybug poster.)

 

Early in her explorations of Budapest's streets and buildings, Y noticed intriguing historic bricks and tracked down the Brick Museum.  I'm not sure this is the very place, but scroll down for some photos and a brief English paragraph – or read onward in the text if your Hungarian is up to it!  Y's photos, like this one, set the stage for my current obsession with bricks.  (I'm sure Y would grant me permission to reproduce…but I want to surprise her with a "You've done it again!" moment).

 

Suddenly, I had a revelation:-- that among the old bricks I'd snagged from a neighbour's renovation project, I also had "trademarked" bricks – among them, some local heroes such as the "Clayburn – Made in Canada" variety (actually made near Abbotsford, BC) –

 

… and the "Dominion," likely made in Nanaimo, BC, -- or Saskatchewan!

 

On my walks, I started peering at random bricks in people's yards or at demolition sites.  And voila!  My best find so far (though not one I could bring home) is the elegant "Gartcraig" – a high-quality Scots-made brick that was imported to BC and elsewhere in Canada for the construction of significant buildings.

 

As I researched the internet, I became more and more wrapped up in the historic lore that swirls around rivers and mud and sand in the form of old-time trades and manufacturing.  Consider, for example, that the same conditions that led to brickworks along rivers also led to the production of products like pottery and glass.

 

Here's a game you can play with unending satisfaction (well, for brick nerds).  Do a Google search for "__(NAME)__ River Historic Brickworks" – plugging in any river's name you can think of in the mid-latitudes of North America or Europe.  And there you are 95% sure to find accounts and photos of once-thriving brick manufacturers.  I scored with Mississippi, Cooper, Delaware, Hudson, Missouri, Columbus, St. Lawrence, Thames, Shannon, Danube.  Just as a whimsical test, I tried the river name I loved from my childhood in the East: Monongahela.  Wow!!  What a find! View the photo story here.

 

By this time, I'd decided to use my few old bricks in one small part of my back garden – and refer to it as The Brick Factory.  Not so long ago, I would have disdained any bricks that were not, well, brick-RED – but I've become fond of the pale gold of Clayburn, which appears everywhere in the soil and stones of my yard.

 

Then, in the carefree mood of Summer Camp, I decided to try making a moldable melange with my clay-ish earth and an equal amount of clay mix from the craft store.  Hmmm.  Too much water maybe?  So instead of the small figure I'd hoped to make, I slapped down a messy "brick" with the Yellow House trademark. 

 

What a mess, but things were going better at The Brick Factory garden, and here you see its final state .

 

Those brick-red bricks and reddish stones were allotted their own corner.

 

About then, recycling day came along and, sorting papers and plastics, I came across the packaging from Purdys, Vancouver's famous chocolatier.  How could I resist using this as……..a mold for mini-bricks? 

 

Judging solely on appearance, the finished products wouldn't satisfy the quality control test – no need to move on to the taste test.

 

 

 – but the universe gave me a gentle smile with an article about Purdys in the very next day's paper. (Among other things, it explains that Purdys deliberately dropped their hyphen)

 

Well, making bricks is no easy matter.  Here's just part of the process as described in Ross King's "Brunelleschi's Dome" on the creation of Florence's cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore – a fantastic read, by the way.

 

It's a weighty subject, all right, and you haven't heard the last of it.  (This photo is by the 20^th c. photographer August Sander – more of his sometimes eeerie photos can be seen here.)

 

 

'Boo times two - Hokusai meets Renoir

 

Here's the scene on August 1^st, the official starting point for the Great Deracination of Summer 2022.  I'd been trying to hold the spirit of Hokusai and Aoi Yamaguchi as described last time – "to draw bamboo, become bamboo," and thus, the idea came to me to do a painting titled, "Becoming Bamboo."

 

I started by making a couple reference drawings – "en plein air" as they say, with the actual models before me at 8 am one cool morning.

 

Then I made a start on a figure in a bamboo thicket, on the verge of morphing into the surroundings.

 

Meanwhile, The Dig was under way.

 

The physical labour took place in the shade of early mornings.  The studio work took place in the afternoon in my coolish basement.

 

My figure was striving up as my trusty trowel was striving down.  Photos really cannot capture the impressive convolutions of bamboo roots – over, under, around and through various obstacles, sometimes twinned side-by-side, sometimes overladen at different depths.

 

But I was happier with the root progress than with the painting progress – until Renoir offered a fresh approach. Long ago, I read and have tried to observe Renoir's counsel on drawing from nature, "Do not draw a leaf.  Draw the leaf."   I went to my art notebooks and found a fuller explication as quoted in "My Life and My Films", the autobiography of his famed filmmaker son Jean Renoir:-- 

"If you paint the leaf on a tree without using a model, you risk becoming stereotyped because your imagination will only supply you with a few leaves – whereas Nature offers millions, all on the same tree.  No two leaves are exactly the same.  The artist who paints only what is in his mind must very soon repeat himself."

I decided to make a very deliberate drawing, leaf by leaf, and then use this as the basis for a stencil of leaves that would further envelop the becoming figure in the painting.

 

It was fun to begin cutting out the shapes for the stencil – especially as colours from the cutting board showed through and offered something entirely different.

 

It was fun to bring the painting to its pre-stencil stage.

 

 And it was fun to apply intense lime-green paint through the spaces of the stencil.

 

 

But, it was absolutely not fun to view the result.

 

Rather than becoming bamboo, this figure is becoming fodder for the recycle collection…another of those bright ideas that wasn't so bright after all.  Still, my feelings were salvaged by the work of a master who showed how it's to be done.

 

Coincidentally, I'd just snagged this book from the "Staff Picks" shelf at the local branch library. 

 

William Morris is an enduring hero of mine for, among other things, his gorgeous fabric designs which are usually based on botanical themes. Was it just possible that he might once have tackled bamboo?  YES!!!!!!

 

Maybe there's a doctoral thesis in arguing Morris' repeated stencil designs against Renoir's counsel – but why argue, when we can just savour it all? 

 

Renoir himself was as enthusiastic a gardener as Monet.  In a favourite story of mine, Renoir scolded his gardeners who were, they told him, busily pulling up weeds.  "There is no such thing as a weed," he said.  And as someone else added, "They're just plants in the wrong places."  As further testament to Renoir's wisdom, I'll add, "No two roots are exactly the same… Nature offers millions of variations, all along the same underground stem."

 

Here's my progress report on Day 15, after about 26 hours of digging and clipping.  Whew!