Epiphany of the West

Epiphany of the West  (27″ x 31″) Collage. 

hanging against a white wall, for irregular edge definition

the best overall light balance- photographing is challenged by the glossy reflective images

The book sale at the downtown SLC library is what sparked this. Two identical Remington books with oversize fold-out prints and dust jackets of “A Dash for the Timber”, plus a 1960’s era book on Remington with a small bland print of the same, and a fat coffee-table book of Impressionism.

Romanticism was the European stylistic period of painting prior to and somewhat contemporary to Impressionism; the middle east and India were often the theme of mythic manifest destiny of proto-industrialization serving the same appetite as the American West across the pond. Nature as sublime and overwhelmingly destructive, ruined civilizations, inescapable human cataclysms (war, slavery, revolution), immersions in lust, and inescapable death were also thematic of Romanticism.

The modern Anthopocene, or Pryocene; an era of collapse and consequences e.g. the Sixth Mass Extinction due to direct human pressure on local ecosystems coupled with a world wide collapse of the environment via human forced global warming. Portraying the inevitable future of now via Remington’s fantasy images of a West that never was, running roughshod over a landcsape created from images that titillated European culture with a proto-industrial remembrance; this is what sparked at the library sale: an Epiphany for an image of Epiphany (sacred manifestation) to Epiphanize a complex of art historical memes and ‘isms that grappled with industrialism v nature, culture v the individual, the individual v death, the present v inevitable. Shifting this perspective from the sentimental view of a past era, to a contemporary future of collapse already written that cannot be undone is the aesthetic driver for the recontextual use the of art of Romanticism, coupled with the gentle and genteel escapism of Impressionism from the reality of 19th Century industrialization, married with the jingoistic American West of Remington.

 

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Pony Car Dialysis

The patient presented with kidneys this damaged after only 400 miles since the latest (in-line fuel filter) kidney transplant. This is the patient’s 4th kidney since 2009. The kidney original to the car was a tiny mesh that was the size of the inside diameter of the tubes at each end of the filter, and was problematic probably for the life of the car. It caused me all kinds of grief when I didn’t know it existed while driving it my senior year of high school in 1986. My dad retrieved the car and cleared the mesh, without showing me, then took me out for a spin to show me how much I didn’t deserve the car.

32 years from that drive with my dad, and the patient needed a new gas tank. Ghost dad has been discouraging this tinker, but I’m going to do it anyway. The old tank came out easily enough. Things were pretty clean. No real issues with rust. Just cleaned out and replaced the old rubberized stripping. The patient is lucky, as the original stripping hadn’t been laid all the way around and tended to roll up onto the tank rather then seat under it.

Old and new gas tanks. The old has a sludge mix of rusted grit that continually grows from the rusted inner walls. The drain plug was fused in place from the inside. More than a year ago I siphoned the tank, but that didn’t really effect the heavy silt- it sounds like a gallon of wet sand and pebbles when tipped back and forth.  The fuel sender had quit working long before she came into my care, so the gas gauge didn’t operate. The connective rubber section of gas line to the engine was rotten out as well.

I laid strips of rubberized caulk under the tank to seat it firmly, put in new screws, reconnected the goose neck to the gas cap with new rubber hose & clamps & gasket, and put in a new section of gas line down below.  And a new fuel filter up front in the engine bay.

Tomorrow I’ll head over to the local garage that carries non-ethanol gas and fill up my cans, treating the gas with Archoil to stabilize it. If there are no leaks, and the fuel gauge works again; then she will stretch her legs. Getting rid of the silty tank should cure her of many of her performance issues e.g. low fuel pressure at speed making choking rpms, and choking on whatever bad bits were sliding past the filter (nothing too bad as the jets are still clear).

update: The new gas tank and connections were all fine, so I took her up Emmigration Canyon on Halloween for speed trials on the back bit of “flat” road off the summit and she ran like a whole different car- quieter, no hesitation, no bogging down when pushed; just a clean and smooth response all the way through her full range in each gear, and falloff was just as clean.

Furious Branching

The Tree of Furie is grafting a canopy.

The Handmade Handmaids

Ascension of the Furies.

I cast these in aluminum as an aspect of my MFA thesis. They were The Furies then, but now they can go by Handmaids if they like. With the tree falling in the yard, I finally had a reason to break them out of deep storage.

The remnants of hurricane Rosa will arrive this afternoon, but the morning was perfect for fitting the tree top into the footing, then mounting the figures.

This is about 10 feet tall.

 

I wish I was an Ohio gardener.

Anywhere and everywhere in the West: Fires. 5 minutes out from Salt Lake City. Try not to breathe. No rain since May, with 9 inches so far this year out of an average of 16.

Meanwhile, in Ohio: days of rain with more than 5 inches fallen and it is unremarkable. This is a potted hibiscus on Joanie’s front steps, with hard southern exposure. It is nice to see something that can’t exist where you come from.

Ferris Wright Park and Hopewell Earthworks: ribbon cutting!

Ferris Wright Park and Hopewell Earthworks entrance; aka- ye old homestead.

Many thanks to the City of Dublin, Ohio for its investment in preserving the history of the unique peoples that have inhabited its lands.

Sisters Kaye Myers and Joan Harless, and Dublin City officials give opening remarks for the ribbon cutting ceremony.

Ribbon is cut and bridge over Wright Creek leads public into open space area, formerly the family farm and childhood home of Kaye and Joan.

Relatives from Wright and Holder sides of the family gathered for the special day.

Wright Run Creek, at a stately September walk, courses through the park into the nearby Scioto River.

Audrey the dog takes her exercise, running through the ghost footprint of the old garage.

The family farmhouse, reconfigured to 1820’s original footprint, constructed by Joseph Ferris, the great great grandfather of Kaye and Joan.

The new footbridge at left brings visitors across the creek and onto the acreage.           (photo credit to Allison)

Walt with David Wright, Joan and Kaye’s cousin.

The house is retrofitted into a historic learning lab, with educational programming soon to come.

All dolled up for her opening day.

The W/Right Women. Allison Myers Hendrixson, Kaye Holder Myers, Elizabeth Myers Gerhart, Joan Holder Harless, Stephanie Harless Smith. All direct descendants of Orpha Josephine Wright Holder.

The W/Right Women

Steve Wright and the ladies discuss history of the surrounding trees.

Elizabeth in the back garden, between the two cherry trees.

Sisters in front of the old old old pear tree whose fruit grandma preserved with a hint of clove and cinnamon. Always a special treat durning summer visits.

The not-twins rockin’ the gray twinsies.

South Side of Ferris Wright house.

The gentle breeze keeps up its reputation, probably since Adena and Hopewell eras.

The yard trees are listening. The distant trees line the Scioto river.

Everyone is standing on grandma’s tomatoes, in garden time travel.

Ladies sharing happy memories of place and family.

View from inside / center of large circle earthwork mound. The sun illuminates the southern arc of the large outer circle.

Joseph Ferris was unaware that he placed the house on the earthwork.

Still can’t see the earthwork? Peter helpfully points it out.

Peter, Allison, and Bartlebee enjoy shady breeze on the mound, opening into the neighbor’s field of soy beans.

The trees demark the center mound of the large circle earthwork. The grasses in the distance delineate the outline and center of the square earthwork. All three earthworks open to the North East.

Native Ohio grasses restore what 100 years of farming blended away.

Standing inside the ring of the square mound, facing the center mound, with the house in the distance.

Lets go inside!

Joseph Ferris, his wife, and four children lived in this one room house, the first framed home built in the area in the 1820’s. (all others were log structures)

Joseph Ferris was a carpenter, he hand-hewed this lumber.

That is a giant mortise & tenon joint with internal wooden dowel, and another protruding up high. Real men don’t need nails.

Other things real men don’t need: mortar. The original field stone foundation is hand laid and still perfectly level.

Bean field was site of flint knapping by Adena and Hopewell people visiting the ceremonial mounds.

Bucolic open-air time-capsule.

Thorn Tree. Ohio style.

Cruel Barb.

No running!

In the deep fencerow, past the thorns and poison ivy vine thick as a wrist, hides the shade-loving mushrooms.

Bartlebee listening to the babel of Wright Run Creek over its limestone bedrock.

Historic Dublin Cemetery in the rain. Headstone of Orpha Josephine Wright Holder and her husband John Lowell Holder. Flowers planted annually by Joan.

Elizabeth with her grandmother’s grave in the soft Ohio rain.

Pony Rides

She took me for a spin up Emigration Canyon to thank me for changing her oil (RedLine 10/40 full synthetic race oil) & filter (Mobile M301a), and I gave her 6oz Archoil friction modifier and Archoil fuel additive (after E and I ran her out of gas a week ago to make sure all the old gas was gone). Good “blat’s” coming down, and growls all the way up. It takes some finesse on the clutch not to chirp the tires pulling away at stoplights.

All the fiddling with E’s Subaru and my truck is practice for detailing this blue bombshell. I’m still working up the nerve…

289 D engine (same as the 302) 442 setup (4 barrel carburetor, 4 speed (five with reverse, jokers), 2 barrel exhaust.  

 

My dad special ordered her back in 1964, getting as close to a race package as Ford could put together- with a convertible top. She is built on the frame of the Falcon. She is essentially all original & un-restored, original owner (I count in my dad’s stead). Today’s odometer: 99,672