Tag: Art

Upcycled Christmas Gifts

What wintery wonders shall I share with you today? How about a celebration (and showcase) of upcycled Christmas gifts dreamed into existence by three allstar members of our icehouse rehab team?

Upcycled Christmas Gifts from Pam, Hroth, and Tony (Photo: R.P. Murphy)

Pam, Hroth, and Tony stopped Susan and me in our just-barely-post-winter-solstice tracks with an early Christmas gift (or three) that exemplify the apex of upcycling and adaptive reuse that I’ve been blathering on about for, well, for a looong time.

[pullquote]These upcycled Christmas gifts are a product and symbol of renewal.[/pullquote]

I talk and I type, but these three creative characters have reimagined and reinvented deconstruction debris into functional art and decor. They transformed a piece of old garapa decking and a handful of icehouse artifacts (uncovered during laborious hand excavation for the new foundation) into a handsome coatrack, and they transformed a gnarled piece of rusty steel back into a museum-worthy ice hook that turns the clock back 100+ years.

Let’s start with the photograph at the top of this post which Pam accompanied with the following note of explanation.

Hroth, Tony and I wanted to wish you both a very Merry Christmas. We came up with the idea to make a coat rack out of repurposed items. The wood is old garapa. I found the spikes in the icehouse during inventory and the hook was also discovered in the icehouse during excavation for the concrete floor/footers. Hroth custom made a handle for the ice hook. We also wanted to add a new hummingbird feeder to the garden outside of the breakfast area. Merry Christmas! — Pamuela Murphy

Perfection! Garapa upcycled from Rosslyn’s 2008-9 deck build and miscellaneous ice hauling artifacts reconciled and reborn as a new coat rack that will greet icehouse visitors upon entering the miniature foyer, and a restored antique ice hook that will be displayed prominently in the main room. Bravo, team.

Upcycled Christmas Gifts from Pam, Hroth, and Tony (Photo: R.P. Murphy)

I was curious how Hroth had fabricated the garapa handle for the ice hook out of old decking boards. It’s so round/cylindrical that it looks as if he’d used a lathe.

Two pieces of garapa laminated together. Started out about a 16 inch because it was easier to run through the table saw. I made an octagon out of it on the table saw, then used the big belt sander… I roughed it up a little bit. Didn’t want it to look too perfect. Then Pam suggested that we take a propane torch to it. Made it look older.

It was a fun project. I still need to seal the wood and the metal. Penetrating sealer works well on metal. It’s sharp… We were thinking you might want to put some corks on the ends… or garapa balls. That was the first thing I thought of. We can certainly do that. — Ottosen Hroth

Carving tiny garapa orbs to install on the spikes strikes me as the perfect way to complete the coat rack so that jackets can be hung without getting spikes. It’ll be a difficult-but-intriguing challenge! There must be some technique for creating a small wooden sphere out of a block of wood. Hhhmmm…

I can’t imagine more perfect Christmas gifts. Their collaboration has rendered layers of Rosslyn history — from the late 1800s and early 1900s when the icehouse was in use, through 2008 when we built the deck that yielded this garapa, to 2022 when the old deck was deconstructed and the icehouse rehabilitation was initiated — into timeless beauty that will adorn the icehouse when it is introduced/revealed next summer. These upcycled Christmas gifts are a product and symbol of renewal. Our gratitude is exceeded only by Hroth’s, Pam’s, and Tony’s collaborative accomplishment.

Upcycled Christmas Gifts (Photo: R.P. Murphy)

Upcycled Christmas Gifts (Photo: R.P. Murphy)

Upcycled Christmas Gift 2022: antique ice hook with handmade handle (Photo: R.P. Murphy)

The flip-through gallery above offers a few more details, and all three (as the two featured photographs above) are documented inside the icehouse with mid-construction backdrops: old studs with new spray foam insulation and new subfloor ready for interior framing and hardwood flooring. It’s tempting to offer tidier or even fancier backdrops, but authenticity prevails. Future decor created from old materials, documented midstream the icehouse’s transformation. Future, past, and present. Concurrent history and hope, a timeless present, an artistic representation of this liminal moment.

Backstory to Upcycled Christmas Gifts

Susan and my gratitude to Pam, Hroth, and Tony is (and obviously should be) the focus of today’s Rosslyn Redux installment, but I can’t conclude without first considering a slightly more amplified retrospective, the backstory, if you will, to the new coat rack and restored ice hook.

Let’s start by rewinding the timeline to 2008-9. Building the new deck and installing garapa decking was the proverbial caboose in a virtually endless train of construction that started in the summer of 2006. (Source: Garapa Decking 2008-2009)

In the photograph below, taken exactly fourteen years ago today, Warren Cross is putting the finishing touches on our first deck build. Although the perspective may be misleading given the still unbuilt garbage and recycling “shed” which today stands directly behind Warren, this is the northernmost extension of Rosslyn’s deck. The stone step (actually a repurposed hitching post chiseled from Chazy and Trenton limestone (aka “Essex stone”) and the rhododendron shrubs are not yet in place either.

But it you imagine the perspective as if you were standing just north of the morning room, looking back toward the carriage barn and icehouse, you’ll be oriented in no time. Oriented, yes, but nevertheless a bit disoriented too, I imagine, as you look upon a carpenter laboring in the snow to scribe and affix the garapa deck skirting / apron that will complete the installation that had began in the autumn with far more hospitable conditions.

Warren Cross completing garapa decking installation on December 22, 2008 (Photo: Geo Davis)

It’s worth noting that Warren, already in his mature years when he worked on Rosslyn with us, not only threw himself into difficult endeavors like the one above, he contributed decades’ of experience and an unsurpassed work ethic that inspired everyone with whom he worked in 2008 and 2009. But there’s an even more notable memory that describes Warren. He was a gentleman. And he was a gentle man. It was a privilege to witness Warren’s collegiality, and Rosslyn profited enduringly from his expertise. But it was his disposition, his consideration, and his kindness that make me nostalgic when I hear him mentioned or when I catch sight of him in photographs.

These handsome upcycled Christmas gifts are enriched by memories of Warren Cross and others (Kevin Boyle, Doug Decker, Don Gould, Andy Cross, Jonathan Schier, Jacob Sawitski, and Mike Manzer) who labored from autumn-to-winter, past the winter solstice, and almost until Christmas, in order to see this project through. And that’s only the first chapter of Rosslyn’s garapa decking. This past summer, when we deconstructed and rebuilt Rosslyn’s deck, was the second chapter.

In preparation for our summer 2022 deck rebuild we carefully salvaged all of this original garapa decking, and current experiments are underway to determine the most appealing adaptive reuse in the new icehouse project. (Source: Garapa Decking 2008-2009)

I’ve recounted our summer adventure in recent months, so I’ll simply say now that all of these new memories are infused into the coat rack and ice hook. In addition to Pam and Hroth and Tony, this new chapter in Rosslyn’s garapa decking journey summon fond recollections of David McCabe, Ed Conlin, Eric Crowningshield, Matt Sayward, Justin Buck, Jarrett Cruikshank, Brandon Dumas, Andrew Roberts, and Jason Lautenschuet.

In terms of memories conjured by this repurposed garapa decking, I should include Hroth’s “research” this past autumn into how best we might reuse the lumber. There was such anticipation and excitement in the hours he experimented and explored. The image below perfectly illustrates the hidden gold just waiting to reemerge from the deconstructed decking material.

Glorious Garapa: Upcycling Decking Debris (Source: R.P. Murphy)

I wrote this at the time.

Hroth is continuing to experiment with the garapa decking we salvaged from our summer 2022 deck rebuild. I’m hoping to repurpose this honey toned Brazilian hardwood as paneling in the icehouse bathroom. (Source: Upcycling Decking Debris)

Hroth’s discoveries underpin our plan to panel the interior of the new icehouse bathroom with what for a decade and a half withstood the Adirondack Coast elements season after season, and a rambunctious parade of footfalls, barbecues, dog paws, wetsuits, etc. It’s as if the new coat rack exudes the anticipation and optimism that many of us brought to the journey of upcycling the old decking into the new paneling.

And there is an aside that I’m unable to resist mentioning. Pam’s late husband, Bob Murphy, who worked as our property caretaker and became an admired and dearly respected friend, several times removed and reinstalled Rosslyn’s garapa decking over the years — monitoring, triaging, and compensating for the failing TimberSIL substructure. He knew that we would need to rebuild the entire deck soon, and yet he waged a relentless campaign to extend the useful life of the deck as long as possible. I think he’d be proud of the work accomplished by the team this summer, and he sure would have loved being part of that team! And the icehouse rehab would have thrilled him. Needless to say, these upcycled Christmas gifts from Pam and Hroth and Tony also exude Bob’s smile, familiar chuckle, and that mischievous twinkle in his eyes.

And what about that antique ice hook?

I mentioned above an antique ice hook, and the photograph below illustrates exactly what I was referring to. Disinterred by Tony while cleaning out and grading the dirt floor of the icehouse, this badly corroded artifact bears an uncanny resemblsnce to a common tool of yesteryear: the handheld hook. This implement was most often used for 1) grabbing and hauling ice blocks and/or 2) carrying hay bales. The location where this relic was discovered (as well as plenty of examples uncovered by quick research online) strongly suggest that this is an antique ice hook. (Source: Icehouse Rehab 01: The Ice Hook)

Isn’t a beauty? Well, rusty and corroded, but a beauty nonetheless, I think.

Antique Ice Hook, artifact unearthed during the icehouse rehabilitation, 2022 (Source: R.P. Murphy)

The prospect of restoring that ice hook crossed my mind at the time. But it struck me as a challenging proposition given the advanced state of decay. What a surreal transformation from rust-crusted phantom to display-ready relic! It too is marinated in memories, some recent and personal, others vague and distant. In the near rearview mirror are the painstaking efforts made by our team to secure the historic stone foundation beneath the icehouse while ensuring the structural integrity demanded by modern building codes. A labor of loves on the parts of so many. And today we can look back from the proud side of accomplishment. As for the more distant rearview, the antique mirror has succumbed to the influence of time, the glass crazed and hazy, the metallic silver chipped and flaking. And yet we can detect traces of laughter and gossip as blocks of ice were cut from the lake, hooked and hauled up to the icehouse, and stacked in tidy tiers for cooling and consumption during temperate times ahead.

A Glimmer of Springtime

In closing this runaway post, I would like to express my warmest gratitude for the upcycled Christmas gifts above, and for a new hummingbird feeder to welcome our exuberant avian friends back in the springtime. Taken together this medley of gifts excite in Susan and me the enthusiasm and optimism for the coming months of rehabilitation and mere months from now the opportunity to celebrate a project too long deferred and so often anticipated. With luck we’ll be rejoicing together in the newly completed icehouse by the time the hummingbirds return to Rosslyn.

Hummingbird Feeder 2022 Christmas Gift from Pam, Tony, and Hroth (Photo: R.P. Murphy)

Thank you, Pam, Hroth, and Tony for these perfect presents. And thank you to everyone else I’ve mentioned above for enriching this home and our lives. I look forward to rekindling these memories when I hang my coat or my cap up each time I enter the icehouse. Merry Christmas to all!

December 22, 2022
Genre Fluid

Today I offer you a quick follow-up to my February 4, 2023 post, “Genre Resistance“. In diving a little deeper into the genre fluidity of Rosslyn Redux (in general) and redacting Rosslyn in particular, I hope to dilate the creative quandary and exploratory process.

But first, a couple of asides.

Nude with Yellow Backdrop by Paul Rossi (Photo: Geo Davis)

First, yes, you read that correctly. Genre fluid. Not gender fluid. But… I couldn’t resist the temptation to include the painting by artist, Paul Rossi. It hangs in our front parlor (aka the “green room”) adjacent to a painting we purchased in Kenya in 2005 shortly before we were wed in a traditional Maasai ceremony. More on that elsewhere. But the nude against yellow backdrop (one of several Rossi paintings, illustrations, and linocuts we’re fortunate to own) was at once appropriate and inappropriate for this post. And the similarity between genre and gender fluidity was the inevitable trigger. Looong story short, Susan fell for this painting the moment she saw it in Paul’s Wadhams studio a dozen or more years ago. Had to have it. And so home it came. But the next morning, while coffee-ing up in the morning, if memory serves, she suddenly remarked that the female figure was endowed with a phallus! Actually, that’s not exactly what she said, but that was the gist. She still loved the painting, but she’s never been able to “un-see” the appendage (the subject’s hand and wrist) as anything other than, well, let’s call it a gender blending silhouette.

Now, for the second aside. If you landed here looking for music that bridges more than one classification, I’m sorry to disappoint, but this is your exit ramp. Thanks for stopping by, and safe travels!

I’m well aware that the term “genre fluid” has been adopted primarily to describe the unboxing of music categories, the wide ranging appetites that many/most of us have when it comes to our musical listening preferences, and even the hybridization across conventional genres that accurately describes a great deal of the most innovative music being performed. In fact one would be hard pressed to quickly dig up any non-music references online to “genre fluid” without some headlamp-on spelunking into the bowels of the interwebs.

Paintings in Front Parlor (Photo: Geo Davis)

But today I’d like to post a gentle challenge to the mainstream music-centric understanding of genre fluidity. Specifically I’d like to steer you toward a broader, more inclusive notion of art, literature, and music that defies conventional segregation. I’m referencing creative arts unconfined by convention and convenience, free range arts that occupy liminal spaces, interstitial inventions, and hybrid genres that redefine expectations and experiences.

Let’s alight briefly here:

Genre Fluid: appreciating several different genres. Most commonly applied to music, but can also refer to films, games or any other media. (Source: Urban Dictionary)

And here:

I probably mean this in the most manifesto-ing way that genres don’t exist. They don’t exist at all… Genres for me are just a way in which we are controlled, protected I suppose but I’m not a writer to be protected at all. — Eileen Myles (Source: The New Inquiry)

We all recognize genre distinctions. They’ve been trained into since childhood. But does that make them important? Conclusive? Binding? Beneficial? Or just familiar?

So how does this notion of genre fluid composition relate to Rosslyn? I’ll sidestep the obvious architectural and design implications (which, incidentally, are spot on!) for now and restrain this reflection to writing.

August 2022 marked my return to the challenge of *redacting Rosslyn* out of sprawling scrapbooks, flaneurial field notes, poetry and storytelling, lyric essays, monologues, and an avalanche of artifacts.

[…]

Ostensibly a memoir in trajectory and scope, this idiosyncratic experiment… [is] an amalgam… that bridges and blurs genres, that gathers heterogeneous ingredients and collages them… in interstitial narrative, allowing the wholeness to emerge out of the fragments, not altogether unlike a mosaic. Or a montage. Or a sculpture… The space in-between the fragments becomes as important as the fragments themselves.

This experiment in genre fluidity is second nature, and I suspect that some readers may find it slightly vexing. Undisciplined and disjointed. Fair criticism, I should note. But a compelling component of the creative process at this germinal stage. No, not just compelling. Enabling. Empowering. Generative.

I don’t find it interesting to stay in my lane, to observe the rules of the road, etc. Blogging for me has been an opportunity… [to] play around and experiment and defy expectations and overlap genres and distort genres per the whims or needs of my moment, my message. And this doesn’t just go for word salad. It’s a visual salad too. A library, stage, and interactive interactive gallery. And more. Lately I’ve been experimenting with video. With audio. Experimenting. Exploring. No rules.

This freedom to share our Rosslyn adventure per my mesmerizing muse, uninhibited, unbound, has been an exhilarating and liberating counterpoint to the often rigid structure, rules, and traditions that guided our historic rehabilitation. Untethered. Whimsical. Freestyle. (Source: Genre Resistance)

Does this make it right? It’s too early to say, at least in any sweeping and conclusive way. But it has been vital to my creative process. Hybridization and fusion and cross pollination are — have always been — exhilarating and attractive to me. Mix. Remix. Repeat…

Thank you for abiding my appetite for curiosity and experimentation!

March 3, 2023
Where in the World is Rosslyn?
Essex, NY in 1876 (Source: OW Gray Atlas of Essex County)

Where in the world is Rosslyn? If you’re not too terribly averse to a verse, here’s an introduction writ small (wrapped up in a tidy micropoem.)
```
Up in the Adirondacks
at the foot of the foothills,
where Champlain's sweet waters
refresh, render respite,
and sooth worldweary souls,
a sanctuary sings
welcoming melodies.
(Source: Where's Rosslyn?)
```
Poetry not your preference? Pity! 😉 Let’s try this.

Rosslyn is perched on the Adirondack shore of Lake Champlain in Essex, New York. Unlike the Adirondack High Peaks region, the Adirondack Coast (which comprises much of Champlain’s western shoreline) exhibits picturesque colonial architectural unlike the more recent Adirondack rustic camps located further inland. Historic Essex boasts one of the most intact, best preserved collections of early 19th century United States architectural heritage. Serving as a gateway community since the late 1700s, Essex remains an important crossroads today. The Essex-Charlotte ferry connects New York State with Vermont, while nearby NYS Route 87 and Amtrack trains connect Montreal, Albany and New York City. (Source: Where’s Rosslyn? )

Beginning to zero in on where in the world Rosslyn is? If neither the poetics of place nor encyclopedic brevity are helping much, let’s try a map or two. Maybe I can narrow your focus a little further with this line drawing that I created with Katie Shepard for our community blog, Essex on Lake Champlain back in 2015. (If you click on the map it’ll open a window where you can download the unfuzzy PDF complete with a key explaining each of the numbers in the map.)

Essex Architecture Map, July 2015 (Source: Essex on Lake Champlain)

Enough with the old school black and white (and sepia with faint rose highlighting). It’s time for technicolor!

Where in the World is Rosslyn in Color?!?!

When it comes to brightening things up, there’s no better bet than close friend, artist, and best selling author, Amy Guglielmo (@amyguglielmo). Back on November 18, 2013 I shared a post showcasing Ms. Guglielmo’s dazzling aerial view of our Essex neighborhood.

Essex Aerial View (Art by Amy Guglielmo)

So, where in the world is Rosslyn? Train your eyes on the three docks/piers extending out into Lake Champlain. The middle one is the ferry dock. (See the ferry heading to Vermont?) The smallest of the three man made peninsula’s is Rosslyn’s dock house (aka “boathouse”). Armed with that little insight, perhaps you can find the same property on the two maps above? (Hint: the boathouse wasn’t yet constructed in 1876 when the map at the top of this post was made.)

Now back to Amy’s painting and Rosslyn’s boathouse, “the maritime folly that enchanted us back in 2005-6 enough to swap NYC for the Adirondacks.”

Heck, it still enchants us despite constant maintenance and seasonal flood worries. And the boathouse hammock is a mini vacation!

Head inland from the boathouse and you’ll discover Rosslyn itself, tucked next to two massive trees, a ginkgo and what I believe is a silver maple (Acer saccharinum). In fact, I’m sitting in the top right room on the second floor right now. Perhaps if you swoop in a little lower you’ll catch me jotting this blog post.

A little further left of the house are the carriage barn (lower) and ice house (upper) which offer up all sorts of mysteries. But those for another day. Unless you remember three curious artifacts I shared with you a while ago… (Source: Essex Aerial View)

Hopefully this helped orient you. Yes, a Google map might be more precise and quicker, but sometimes Rosslyn Redux and the art of homing aren’t particularly precise or quick. Besides, a thin veil of privacy keeps the snoopers away. Or at least adds a little challenge to their quest. But if you’re looking for a little more clarity on where in the world Rosslyn is located, I suggest you check out this hopefully helpful hub: “Where’s Rosslyn?“
January 17, 2023
Rosslyn Boathouse Doodle on a Slate

Rosslyn boathouse doodle on a slate for Adirondack Art Association fundraiser

The Adirondack Art Association in Essex, NY sponsored a creative fundraiser recently. They invited members of the community to transform recycled slate from Rosslyn’s roof into unique artworks to auction off. Dreamed up by Amy Guglielmo following her successful Depot Theatre “sap bucket” art auctions, the slate art auction was an artistic and fundraising success.

Though I’m not sure how much my goofy doodle of Rosslyn’s boathouse contributed…

Just thought you would enjoy seeing it. Actually part of a longer term project to create slate doodles of many historic Essex architectural views which is the reason I saved the slate back when we were renovating. One more project for a rainy day!

August 16, 2013
New Year’s Eve

It’s New Year’s Eve 2022. I’ve just returned from a provocative exhibition by Shirin Neshat, with whom I originally became acquainted by way of Essex friend and photographer, Larry Barns, a dozen years or more ago.

New Year’s Eve: ephemeral folly (Photo: Hroth Ottosen)

Land of Dreams is a solo exhibition by Shirin Neshat, an Iranian-born artist and filmmaker based in New York Comprising photography, film, and video, the exhibition brings together two bodies of work, Land of Dreams (2019), and Dreamers (2013-16), a trilogy of video installations.
Source: SITE Santa Fe

While there’s much to say about Neshat’s work, that will wait for another time as this day’s, this year’s minutes are too quickly sifting through my fingers and falling into a new year. It’s New Year’s Eve. An ending. And a fresh start.

Instead of responding to Neshat’s portraits and films, I’ll allow this post to follow the footfalls of my afternoon, out of Neshat’s Land of Dreams and into Max Cole’s Endless Journey. This New Mexico-based painter’s meticulous meditations slowed my senses and my sensibility. Cole’s “Thoughts on Art” leapt from the wall and into my dream-addled skull, tickling the tattered leaves of my inquiry these last five months.

And “knowing how way leads on to way”, one fragment falling upon another, and another, and another,… I’ve decided to resist looking back — for now at least — for answers and assurance that this afternoon’s wisps and tatters and excerpts are what they appear to be. I’ll trust the “singing underneath” and trace my index finger aling this newfound map, starting with a few snippets from Max Cole’s “Thoughts on Art”.

There is nothing to say without first knowing yourself.

Choices have to be made and parameters established. All that remains should be only essential means. This process of definition occurs over years.

Art is something that must be lived. It is long and there are no shortcuts.

As in life, in art nothing exists removed from the past or separated from the present.

Most of reality is not visible. Art makes perceptible the indefinable quality of presence. It is content which is the soul of art.

[…]

The motivation for making art is art and its insights into that which transcends the material. Nothing else. There can be no compromise.

[…]

All creativity draws from the same source regardless of discipline and eventually merges at a common point which is philosophical.
Max Cole, “Thoughts on Art” (SITE Santa Fe)

It’s New Year’s Eve. An ending. A fresh start. An interstitial moment, part conclusion and part beginning. The common point where deconstruction couples with construction, the philosophical rebirth. Death. Birth. Phoenix from ashes.

And that photograph above, a folly fabricated by Hroth, temporarily framing my future desk view, is in fact a fleeting and false perspective. Delightful. Whimsical. An old window and frame repurposed from the historic icehouse’s former life, propped in an incongruous aperture in the icehouse’s future life. A meeting of of past and future in the present. Ephemeral. Art rendering for a moment the invisible visible. “Art makes perceptible the indefinable quality of presence.”

December 31, 2022
Voyeuristic Glimpses & Mosaic Mirages

Voyeuristic Glimpses: Carley, June 9, 2020 (Photo: Geo Davis)

Before you shift uneasily in your seat and survey your surroundings nervously, I’d best prologue my post with an assurance that nothing unseemly is in store. Exhale. Voyeuristic glimpses, yes, but only as the subject of an overdue clarification.

Voyeuristic Glimpses

After bricks and mortar, land and lake, residents (human and canine), Rosslyn’s blog is the most visible — and maybe even the most accessible — part. And if the blog is by definition a digitally distributed diary, then it offers voyeuristic glimpses into Susan and my relationship with Rosslyn, a circa 1820 home and property on the Adirondack Coast of Lake Champlain. We can debate how candid or unfiltered they are, of course, because the experiences these coup d’œil capture are inevitably shaped and edited by my perspective. As such the metaphorical “fly on the wall” is more aspirational goal than reality, and the voyeuristic glimpses captured in these blog posts do not pretend to be much more than editorialized field notes. Shoot for objectivity; settle for subjectivity. Caveat emptor.

Voyeuristic glimpses aside, the blog is only one constituent part of Rosslyn Redux. In sum, it’s actually a sprawling, multimodal mess! Er, I mean… it’s a multidisciplinary *experiment*.

Voyeuristic Glimpses: icehouse door, December 27, 2022 (Photo: R.P. Murphy)

Mosaic Mirages

Beyond chronicling the stumbles and growth spurts of Rosslyn’s historic rehabilitation (along with the inevitable ups and downs of our romantic runaway to this lakeside Elysian), Rosslyn Redux is an exploration. An experiment. A creative endeavor. A lyric essay — from Old French essaimeaning attempt or trial — calling upon collage and composting as often as language and logic. In many respects, Rosslyn Redux aspires more to conceptual art than a home renovation blog, more to performance art than a midlife marriage memoir. It’s an epic poem mosaic (a constellation of poetry fragments) crossed with an archeological exhibition crossed with an inside-out inquiry into homing and homeness crossed with a serial meditation on rootedness and itinérance and longevity and impermanence crossed with a genre bending memoir crossed with a sketch and artifact swollen scrapbook.

Hhhmmm… If it’s all this, or even close to all this, then isn’t it just a cluttered attic too deep and dusty to decipher?

Sometimes. So far.

Voyeuristic Glimpses: contemplative Pam, December 13, 2022 (Photo: Hroth Ottosen)

But I’m endeavoring to evolve Rosslyn Redux beyond an avalanche of artifacts into a cohesive experience. Into a sojourner’s stopover, perhaps even the sort of sanctuary that Rosslyn has been for us.

My initial foray into building something durable out of our relationship with Rosslyn lead to bookish brainstorms (and hundreds of pages of drafts.) But conversations with editors and agents, pitching what was most readily definable as a memoir in those days, consistently came up against the same setback. Whether genuinely or politely intrigued by the ingredients for our Rosslyn story, everyone advised me to refocus the story, to restrain the narrative arc to my relationship with Susan. Newlyweds swapping Manhattan for the bucolic Adirondack Coast where they anticipated simplifying their lives while licking their wounds. Newlyweds nesting in a tumbledown money pit. A poet and a designer dive into home renovation… what could go wrong?!?!

I was also consistently and repeatedly advised to limit the story to one year. Two or more years is too messy! (Of note, editors’ and agents’ discomfort with the sprawling scope and calendar of our renovation was also a familiar refrain with our parents who were were increasingly nervous about the ever attenuating timeline and dwindling coffers.)

The trouble was, this was as much a story about Rosslyn as it was about the two of us. And so much more. And “the story” felt to me like more than a story. I envisioned an immersion. A three-dimensional immersion. I envisioned inviting the audience into the experience more like a long-stay houseguest, not just a reader. And, the truth be told, I was as keen to explore the limitations of language as I was to document the historic property’s rehabilitation; our hyperlocal reboot; a meandering meditation on home; etc.

Needless to say, I wandered and wondered and gradually — accepting that I was lost — I succumbed to inertia.

But Susan and my relationship with Rosslyn did not end. The sanctuary salved us, and the adventures reignited our wonderlust. And little by little clarity has emerged, a plan, a map forward. Born of necessity. And that, my friends, is why the last five months have been so different than the previous. And while the coming months will continue to catalyze and coalesce a map. Perhaps even a clear and cohesive multidisciplinary work to offer my virtual houseguests.

January 5, 2023
Peach Haikus

Peach Haikus (Image: Geo Davis)

Today’s a day for peach haikus. With blustery storm incoming, our team concerned about balancing inclement weather reports with an ambitious 4-day scope of work, and the sort of bone-deep chill that shivers the bones and shakes the confidence, I propose that we take a micro-vacation. How’s that? Let’s flip the calendar back to sunny August when Rosslyn’s peach trees offered up sun warmed fruit bursting with nectar. A pair of summer-soaked watercolors and a pair of poems just might take the edge off and remind us that similar joys lay ahead. I hope that you enjoy these peach haikus.

Peach Haikus

As I’ve mentioned previously, recent years have drawn me toward the humility and mystery of haiku. Through brevity and minimalism blossoms a microscopic world. An invitation to disconnect from the hurly-burly for a while in order to immerse ourselves in a moment, a fragment. And often that miniature moment actually contains something immense, universal. A bit like gazing into a small drop of water that appears to amplify the world around it like a gnome-scale snow globe. Minus the snow. We’re trying to conjure summer vibes after all.

·•·

Peaches This Year

Few peaches this year
but plump, nectar swollen with
best flavor ever.
— Geo Davis

·•·

First Peaches

Summer’s first peaches,
sunshine soaked and siren sweet,
seduce all senses.
— Geo Davis

Peach Haikus (Image: Geo Davis)

Peach Haikus in Mid-December

There’s something decadent about peaches in wintery months. Once upon a time it would have been an impossibility, of course, but in this brave new world it’s possible to purchase peaches year-round, harvested faraway in warmer climes. And yet, no matter how reputable the source, there’s simply no comparing a snow season peach to the fresh-off-the-tree variety we enjoy in mid to late summer. The colors are almost impossibly saturated, and the sweet treacle that drips from lips is an indulgence on par only with fantasies. Even the aroma of a sun soaked peach pulled from the branch is an extravagance. Store bought winter beaches often have no smell at all, or only the subtlest of ghost-smells, like a facsimile transmitted too many times, diluted with each new iteration.

And yet, perhaps, just maybe these images and these peach haikus will conjure for you a recollection so tantalizing that your optimism will rebound, incoming winter will settle into a less ominous perspective, and your enthusiasm for next summer’s fruit will revitalize your spirits. Hope so!

December 14, 2022
Apple Still Life

Seven Apples, an apple still life, August 10, 2022 (Source: Geo Davis)

Sometime seven apples, five ripe edibles and two depicted in watercolor, are perfection. Rosslyn’s curious combination of real fruit and facsimiles (the latter painted by a dear friend, Amy Guglielmo, nearly two decades ago) are subtly playful. A self reflective still life, if you will. A juxtaposition of food and art.

I’ll admit that a decent dose of sentimentality pulls me here. A delicate illustration conjured by a close companion of many years. And plump apples tempting. Granite agonized over, tiles attentively paired by my bride and me, installed by Elaine Miller in the August days of Rosslyn’s lengthy rehabilitation,…

But there’s another poignancy as well, and it’s rooted in the illustrative rendering, liquid pigments now dried onto, into paper. A photograph of a painting of apples. Next to real apples. A verisimilitude vignette. As I endeavor to untangle my Rosslyn narrative from our Rosslyn narrative; to distill my poems and stories and essays and homemade images from the property itself (and her many artifacts); indeed to separate myself, ourselves from the ecosystem that has been our home and our life for so long; there is something in this vignette that resonates deep within me despite the fact that I still can’t quite define it. Perhaps clarity will accrue in the coming months as I reexamine the memories and relics of our sixteen years at Rosslyn. Partly a poetics of place, perhaps. But what else? Why?

August 10, 2022
Boathouse Illustration Revisited

Revisiting my mid-March boathouse illustration as a black and white watercolor. Aaahhh… the magic of digital! (Source: Geo Davis)

Back on March 28, 2022 I shared a whimsical boathouse illustration including some of my creation process. At the time I conceived of the exercise as a way to exercise my rudimentary watercolor abilities while enticing the universe to hasten the spring-to-summer transition. Verdict is out on whether or not my efforts wooed the universe. But the practice was a pleasure, and I’m resolving to make time for more watercolor illustrations this autumn and winter.

You can click the back/forward arrows in the original Instagram post below to see some of the pre-finished phases.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cbqit9bOz6P/

B&W vs. Color Boathouse Illustration

So why revisit this potently pigmented image with achromatic ambitions?

I’ve been experimenting for about a decade with black and white as a visual storytelling medium (carpemidlife.com and @carpemidlife). It’s part of a larger project stretching my comfort with creative risk — in poetry, essay, and storytelling and in photographs, collage, illustration, mixed media mashups, and even a little bit of video — as a way to repurpose midlife malaise into midlife motivation. One of the early decisions I made for focusing and structuring the project was restricting all image-making (and writing, for that matter) to black and white. We live in an era of magnificent digital imaging, stunning verisimilitude, oversaturated colors, and a panoply of intelligent filters, algorithms, etc. to augment reality.

Make no mistake. I’m profoundly grateful to experience these magnificent modern advances in image making, but I find myself missing the granularity and character of the analog world. I explore this more at Carpe Midlife if provoked your curiosity. If not, I’ll return to the present context.

So often in our sweet sixteen years as the stewards of Rosslyn, I’m drawn to the juxtaposition of old and new. In many respects rehabilitating Rosslyn and making our life here has blurred past, present, and future. History is alive. And similarly much of our quotidian existence is timeless. There’s a whimsical simultaneity of lives and times that infiltrates our lakeside lifestyle. And rather than resist it, I often find it enriching, even entertaining. And so I’ve come to playfully experiment, sometimes renovating that which is vintage or antique. Others times I accelerate aging. Or agelessness. And sometimes these shifts in perspective yield surprising, often refreshing new experiences.

I was curious to see what might happen by repurposing a colorful new illustration as a colorless facsimile. Stripping away the cheerful colors, what remains? Is it an anemic phantom image? Does the emphasis change? The feeling?

In my opinion there’s a world of difference between what I notice visually and what I feel internally in response to the black and white boathouse illustration at the top of this page and the color-soaked original below. What do you think?

Original boathouse illustration watercolored cheerfully in hopes of hastening grey spring into technicolor summer! (Source: Geo Davis)

From Boathouse-lust to Wonder-lust

If you’re a longtime reader and you’re detecting a subtle shift in some of these recent blog and social media posts, you’re not wrong. You’re perceptive.

There is a shift underway. Like so many whose views and lifestyles have evolved over the last couple of years — pandemic year and post-pandemic year (if we’re bold enough to assume the latter) — Susan and I have new stories to share about Rosslyn. We’re navigating a liminal space that is still unfurling it’s mysteries for us. As we find our way, I’ll share the experience. With a little luck, we will share the experience.

But for now, I just want to acknowledge that this period of introspection and reflection and significant transition for us is undoubtedly woven into posts like this one. Sometimes familiarity and comfort are exactly what we need. And sometimes wondering and wandering away from the familiar and the comfortable can be just as important.

August 5, 2022
Quest for Permission
Quest for Permission (Photo: Geo Davis)

I am on a quest for permission. Permission from Susan, from Rosslyn, even from family and friends. Most of all I am on a quest for permission from myself. This morning a serendipitous swirl of accidental-coincidental happenings helped me realize this. Chief among them (and the rightful recipients my profound gratitude) in the order they fluttered across my morning:
- newly arrived “intense black” (actually deep green) fountain pen ink from Wordsworth & Black;
- a joy-filled (cheerful words and jolly doodles) letter from my mother, Melissa Davis;
- timely, astute, perspective bending counsel from Virginia Woolf; and
- even more timely but equally astute, epiphanic insight from Nick Bantock.
In the photograph above, a few artifacts hint at the serendipitous series of events that, to my arguably esoteric way of thinking, fall into a phenomenon I refer to as rhyming. Sometimes the universe rhymes, or as poet Jeffrey Harrison might offer, if you’re receptive to it, you might hear “The Singing Underneath“. I’d best stand aside and let him guide us.

“just beneath the world we see,
there is a silent singing that breaks out
at moments, in flickering points of light.”
— Jeffrey Harrison, “The Singing Underneath”

The fountain pen, clogged with dry ink, awaiting new ink, had been a metaphorical reminder that I was stuck. Clogged. I wasn’t flowing as I needed to be. But new ink arrived just in time. The crusty piston pulled clean water in and pushed it out again. Unclogging with each plunge of the piston. Anticipation as I drew up the new ink. And then lines on paper. Perfect. Flowing again.

My mother’s 2-page note, complete with her unique illustrations, was an attentive parade of grateful acknowledgments gathered during a recent adventure together. Unselfconscious. Whimsical. Honest.

Virginia Woolf’s words needn’t be explained, only shared.

“He chooses; he synthesizes; in short, he has ceased to be a chronicler; he has become an artist.” — Virginia Woolf

I don’t know where I came across these words, and I’m failing now to find them. Perhaps I’ve misattributed this quotation? This morning at least, it doesn’t matter. The shift in perspective is precisely what I needed to consider. to prepare me for the keystone concept that gathered it all together.

Artist and author, Nick Bantock, shared a reflection on Griffin & Sabine that resonated right for me.

THE idea of writing a love letter to oneself sounds both indulgent and cheesy, and yet done in the name of self-acceptance rather than narcissism, I feel there’s much merit to the act.

I think when I wrote the following passage, from Sabine to Griffin, I was doing exactly that, I was articulating an inner need to bringing together and unite my opposite selves, my logical and intuitive personas:

“I have loved you in every manner that my imagination could contrive. I have wanted you so deeply that my body sang with pain and pleasure. You have been my obsession, my passion, my philosophers stone of fantasy. You are my desire, my longing, my spirit. I love you unconditionally. Do you hear me, Griffin? Do you see that I cherish you beyond question, that you have nothing to prove to me? You are making your journey to secure yourself. I am already tethered to your side. If you can love yourself, as I love you, there will be no dislocation — you will be whole. Bring yourself home to me and I will immerse you in every ounce of tenderness I possess. Sabine.”

Looking back, I can see that whilst the tale of G and S was certainly an expression of romantic longing, it was also a quest for permission. I was trying to give myself, and others, the encouragement to be both opposite and whole. — Nick Bantock (Source: Facebook, November 14, 2022)

Eureka! In revealing what he’s come to understand about what compelled him to create the Griffin & Sabine books, his words struck that ineffable something that Susan and I are grappling with and that I’ve been exploring in Rosslyn Redux — wondering, yearning, exploring, growing toward, backsliding and second guessing, and then venturing tentatively out again — over the last couple of years. I genuinely believe that he has captured succinctly and lucidly our journey: it’s “a quest for permission.”

I’ve referenced frequently, perhaps too frequently, an ongoing transformation in our relationship with Rosslyn, an evolution in our scheming and prognosticating and brainstorming. I’ve acknowledged liminality and the sometimes bittersweet, sometimes conflicted emotions that manifest suddenly and unpredictably as we attempt to navigate from comfort and stability toward the unfamiliar, unknown. At last I’ve stumbled on what I’ve needed to know. My quest for permission needn’t require such wayward roving. It is first and foremost my own consent I’m questing after. And part of accepting this is granting myself permission to embrace art above chronicle. I’ve suspected this. Dithered. Wondered. Worried. But this morning a confident confluence is flowing. And I’m ready…
November 15, 2022
Eve Ticknor’s Meditative Mirages

Rosslyn Boathouse and Hammock Reflections (Photo: Eve Ticknor)

Every once in a while I get lucky. A dramatic sunrise falling on mist. Gluten free, dairy free chocolate desert on a restaurant menu. A quick smile or pleasantries from a stranger. A dogeared but otherwise forgotten poem resurfacing, reconnecting, re-enchanting after many years…

Many of Eve Ticknor’s (aquavisions.me) watery photographs — especially when hinting of Essex, Lake Champlain, and even Rosslyn — belong in my ever burgeoning catalog of lucky experiences. I have shared Ticknor’s photographs before (Hammock Days of Indian Summer on September 18, 2013 and Eve Ticknor’s Boathouse Photos on June 23, 2014)

Eve’s photographs capture dreamy abstractions that don’t easily reveal their source. (Source: Rosslyn Redux)

The photograph above is a perfect example. It moves before your eyes like a mirage. What is it? A second photograph of the same scene helps demystify the subject.

Rosslyn Boathouse and Hammock Reflections (Photo: Eve Ticknor)

Still stumped? That hypnotic labyrinth of squiggly lines is the key, but the two vertical, shaded columns are helpful too. If you’re still stumped, here’s a third photograph that will decipher the abstract beauty in the previous two photographs.

Rosslyn Boathouse and Hammock Reflections (Photo: Eve Ticknor)

Eve explores refracted and reflected images on the surface of water, never using Photoshop or filters to alter her images. What we see is what she saw. And yet she succeeds in capturing all sorts of whimsical illusions on the water surface. (Rosslyn Redux)

In addition to the mysteries woven into Eve Ticknor’s photographs, I’m also drawn to her “earthy” palette. She often captures rich, nuanced colors in her work, but there’s a muted, organic hue that I find refreshing in today’s super-saturated world of digital photography and pumped up filters. That third image above is especially rich in color and tone, so many putties and heavy contrasts. It strikes me as painterly and meditative in a way that so many crisp, high definition, copies of reality are not.

I’ll conclude with one last hauntingly beautiful images from friend and photographer Eve Ticknor. It is a glimpse over the shoulder of Rosslyn’s boathouse toward the Essex ferry docks pilings, the entire scene veiled in gossamer moodiness. Thank you, Eve!

Rosslyn Boathouse and Essex Ferry Dock Pilings (Photo: Eve Ticknor)

June 14, 2015
Rosslyn Boathouse by Terrell White

Rosslyn Boathouse by Terrell White

Moody Rosslyn boathouse award!?!? I believe that Santa Fe native, Terrell White, may well have painted the most unique and evocative portrait of Rosslyn’s boathouse ever. Ben White, a former student from my brief tenure as a teacher and coach at Santa Fe Preparatory School (1996-9) reached out to me a while ago — how in the world does time slip-slide so swiftly downstream? — with this moody painting inspired by our historic dock house located just north of the Essex ferry dock.

My dad paints a few times a week. He’s always looking for inspiration, and I showed him a picture of your boathouse. Think it came out pretty good! ~ Ben White

The uncanny overlap between my various worlds and life phases tickled me. And the stunning image thrilled me!

Quite a few years have whooshed past since I last connected with Ben’s father. Life happened. Friendly follow-up slipped into the morass of busyness. Years came. Years went.

Until today. Something triggered the memory of this painting. I’ve managed to dug it up. And now it’s yours to enjoy. Let’s raise a cup full of fermented cheer to Terrell White for inventing the moodiest (and the most cinematographic) rendering of Rosslyn’s dock house to ever flit across my radar. I would love to capture a higher resolution photograph or scan of this singular painting, but until then, this curiously cropped digital will do.

Now it’s time to dig through old address books to see if I can reconnect with Terrell White. Stay tuned…

February 26, 2015