Fire and Ice: Views of Climate Change

"La Tuna Fire," by Jeff Frost 

“Receding lines of ice…advancing lines of fire.”

That’s Tim Blunk’s view of the art show he’s curated at Gallery Bergen at Bergen Community College in Paramus, NJ.

“Artists have historically served as the conscience of humanity; now they may serve as the conscience of the earth itself,” Blunk noted in a curator’s statement for the show, which opened January 24 and runs through March 30. The artists in this show, he added, “hope to instill in the viewer a perceptual shift where the environment ceases to be conceived as a place separate from us…”

Jeff Frost pulls visitors’ eyes to stare across the room at a life-size photo of a Los Angeles freeway closed by a smoke-swirling wildfire blazing up a mountainside. The La Tuna Canyon fire in September 2017 endangered homes in Burbank, Glendale and neighboring parts of Los Angeles. It was one of numerous wildfires that have blazed up in southern California communities in recent years.

"Flag (wildfire 08)" by Peter Alan 

Peter Alan pulls viewers close to look at burnt remnants of his home and studio, destroyed in the wine country wildfires in northern California in October 2017. Alan fashioned charred pieces of wood and other objects into a series based on the shape of the American flag as part of a defiant survivor’s body of work entitled “Wildfire: an assault on humanity, hitting home.”

James Balog reveals the breathtaking melting of a glacier in Alaska captured in time-lapse photos taken between 2007-20017. Videos set at high speed pull viewers closer to contemplate the climate change in the past decade that relentlessly shrunk ice packs near the north pole. Balog’s photography work for the Extreme Ice Survey aims “to give a ‘visual voice’ to the planet’s changing ecosystems,” states his website, extremeicesurvey.org.

Marie McCrary tells a more subtle story in a photo of a lake in Norway, just starting to freeze over last October. “The fastest warming region in the world is the Arctic,” notes McCrary, a physics professor at Bergen Community College. She is researching the physical process of rising temperatures in the Arctic and impacts globally.

Other artists in the show—Helena Donzelli, Andrea Geller, Karen Lynn Ingalls, Mitsuko Nakagawa, Jaanika Peerna and Carleen Sheenhan—offer insightful variations on the theme of people and nature intertwined.

Gallery Bergen is in West Hall at Bergen Community College, 400 Paramus Road, Paramus, NJ. It is open Monday-Friday, 11 am to 5 pm.

Armistice Day, 2018 Art Show

poster image by Maly Marstens

November 11 marks the 100^th anniversary of Armistice Day, the ceasefire that ended the First World War. The Puffin Cultural Forum and Frontline Arts commemorate Armistice Day with an exhibition of art works created to inspire countering cultural forces that would allow history to repeat itself, yet again.

The exhibition opening is Saturday, November 10 at 6 pm at The Puffin Cultural Forum, 20 Puffin Way, Teaneck, NJ. The event is free and open to the public. The art show runs through January 19.

Curated by Walt Nygard, Jan Barry and Ron Erickson, the exhibition includes paintings, prints, sculptures and mixed-media works by a variety of artists including Greta Anderson, Jan Barry, Donna Bassin, Terry Berkowitz, Marco Bras, Karen Brussat Butler, Rebecca Darge Christensen, Anne Dushanko Dobek, Michael Eckstein, Ron Erickson, Jim Fallon,  Cathleen Ficht, Karen Fiorito, Manda Gorsegner, Rachel Heberling, Tara Krause, Nathan Lewis, Talia Lugacy, Sigrid H. Mabel, Gardner McFall, Len Merlo, MaryAnn L. Miller, Liz Mitchell, Ruth Bauer Neustadter, Walt Nygard, Joanne Ross, Anthony Santella, Kenneth Schnall, Leokadia Stanik, Greg Stone, Onnie C. Strother, Nina Talbot, Vilja Virks-Lee, Frank Wagner, Eli Wright, and James Yee.

“‘The Wire’ and ‘One Hundred Years’ are companion pieces in that very little has changed in one hundred years except for the backdrop. In 1918 there was a wall of fire wrought by artillery and today there is green grass and blue skies though the barb wire remains,” Ron Erickson, a painter and printmaker from Bogota, NJ, notes in an artist’s statement.

“These days we have no day marking the end of war, no day to celebrate, to proclaim: It’s Over!” says MaryAnn L. Miller, a book artist and poetry coordinator for the NJ Book Arts Symposium. “Battle continues to destroy, to displace populations that will never find a way back to their homes. ‘On Foot/By Hand’ is about those populations: the refugees, the migrants, the asylum seekers, the bombed out.”

“Art can speak for me,” says Rebecca Darge Christensen, an artist from Des Moines, Iowa, who contributed a triptych titled “War. Peace. Armistice.” “I can communicate with everyone through the channel of art. If I can bring people together to the table, with art and food, every prejudice that overrides beauty and goodness is broken. Art can, and should be, accessible to everyone. Through accessibility comes understanding; the tie that binds us to peace and contentment.”

For more information: 
www.puffinculturalforum.org/events/event/700-armistice-day-2018-.html

Earth Songs II

Just published a new collection of poetry titled Earth Songs II. It’s a sequel to Earth Songs: New & Selected Poems, published in 2003. The new collection commemorates family members and friends who are no longer with us and a now fading time when peacefully protesting senseless wars and the government’s ill treatment of injured soldiers seemed to have a hope of transforming America into a more caring culture.

Amid these graveyard thoughts, written during sleepless nights and Warrior Writers workshops, sometime zestful poems emerged like spring flowers, renewed displays of Nature’s healing powers. These poems were nourished by the kindness of friends, relatives, lovers, strangers, and by treks in astounding outdoors places, where battered spirits can be renewed.

Come See

A flare of flowers, a sunset aflame—

I capture rapture with my camera,

In a Zen penning of a poem—

And such moments, forget what’s lost

Commemorating Peace

When I was growing up,

The whole village stopped

For a moment of silence

At the 11^th hour of the 11^th day

Of the 11^th month—

Armistice Day.

It was treated seriously,

Like Arbor Day,

When we planted trees—

Ancient holy days now,

When people commemorated peace

And spring planting.

Early Warning

Winter dropped from the October sky

Two days before Halloween—

Tree branches smothered in snow

On summer leaves snapping deep into the night

Made darker by downed power lines

Global warming! skeptics scoffed—

As this part of suburban civilization

Staggered for days without electricity,

Towns closed schools, postponed Halloween

Until tangled wires and lives are restored

The paperback book, listed at $10, is available at lulu (with a 10 percent discount): http://www.lulu.com/shop/jan-barry/earth-songs-ii-poems-of-love-loss-and-life/paperback/product-23822398.html

Artists Take on Climate Change

"Keep It in the Ground," art by Ruth Bauer Neustadter

Ruth Bauer Neustadter’s latest art show invites viewers to participate in a community discussion about what can be done regarding global environmental crises. In many cases, naming and framing an issue to the public is the first step in effectively addressing the problem. In this case, art viewers are asked to help in the framing.

“Turn the Tide: Paintings which Encourage a Conversation About the Future of Mother Earth” opened last night at the Hackensack (NJ) Performing Arts Center with a spirited crowd of about 50 painters, dancers, poets and environmental activists joining an impromptu performance of reflections on her art’s themes. 

“This is the most important issue—the state of Mother Earth,” Neustadter said of the event, encouraging audience members to share their thoughts on viewing the mixed-media pieces in this show. The works on display were made from recycled metal, plastic, wood and paper items in brightly painted arrangements. Titles convey the themes of somewhat abstract works: “Endangered Species,”  “Red Tide,”  “Pipelines, Trains, Oil.”

Addressing the theme of a black and white piece titled “Empty Honeycombs,” four dancers stood in a line near the middle of the room, humming as they slowly, slowly, slowly bent forward and collapsed on the floor. One by one, other audience members offered comments on the long-reported decline of honey bees.

Another dancer celebrated a colorful art piece titled “Mother Earth” with graceful, sweeping movements. “Life, love, mother—Mother Earth,” she said.

I contributed a poem jotted down while contemplating a piece titled “Keep It in the Ground.”

The detritus of dead sea creatures

and decayed vegetation

is sucked out of the ground

and burned to choking smoke

that poisons living creatures

and whacks the balance of Nature

back toward a deadly, prehistoric

time before the creation

of humankind

A man read a friend’s poem, contemplating “Endangered Species”:

“When will it end? Maybe when we become endangered—and it may be closer than we think.”

Turning to what can be done, one of the dancers said she has shifted her priorities to addressing environmental justice issues. Two other audience members talked about raising monarch butterflies on milkweed plants in their back yard and inside their home. A member of the Hackensack Environmental Commission talked about a project to rebuild an old greenhouse in a city park and put it back into use.

A woman announced that a citywide litter cleanup campaign called “Slam Dunk the Junk” is scheduled for this weekend, with civic group members gathering at the Hackensack Performing Arts Center, 102 State St., at 9 am on Sunday, postponed due to an expected rain storm on Saturday.

Another woman spoke out about destruction of rainforests due to clearcutting for beef growing operations, encouraging the crowd to support a campaign asking people to cut the amount of beef they eat. “What if everybody ate half as much—that would make a big difference,” she said.

Neustadter’s son Josh commented that, as an environmental researcher, he’s thought a lot about how to replace plastic—which permeates modern society—with something biodegradable. While that vexing problem is being addressed, he said, people “need to do more with less,” to reduce the amount of castoff junk that doesn’t biodegrade.

Summing up the evening, a woman said she was excited by “the burst of energy that comes from these paintings” and spread through the audience.  

For more information: https://www.hacpac.org/art-gallery/

  

Winnie the Pooh and War

A.A. Milne in the World War
(www.royalsignalsmuseum.co.uk)

The seemingly wistful author of Winnie the Pooh and other children’s stories was a morose war veteran trying to figure out how to amuse a lively young son. This bitter-sweet story is the heart of the 2017 film “Goodbye Christopher Robin,” which appeared recently on cable television. Scenes of cozy home front life suddenly explode into battlefield mayhem and back to awkward social scenes, as Milne and fellow trench warfare veterans try to maintain British composure. Astute film reviewers alerted audiences that this is not a warm and fuzzy story.

“A. A. Milne fought in the epic Battle of the Somme, in 1916, when a million men were killed or injured. It was one of the bloodiest battles in human history. Milne, already a playwright and a novelist, was among those wounded,” The New Yorker’s Robin Wright noted. “He went home shell-shocked, with all the haunting symptoms of what is today diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder, or P.T.S.D.”

Hollywood Reporter reviewer Sheri Linden observed: “When a popped champagne cork or opening-night spotlight triggers flashbacks, he does his best to maintain a stiff upper lip.” But Milne’s flashback flinches at home and on walks in the woods make his preschool-age son, Christopher Robin, who prefers the nickname Billy, “as watchful and wary as he is hungry for paternal affection … Billy is an old soul with a knack for empathy, skillfully talking his war-damaged father out of his occasional panic attacks.” 

Father-son adventures of creating playful tales involving a teddy bear and other stuffed animals romping with a boy named Christopher Robin evolved, through Milne’s playwriting skills, into a wildly popular set of books with lively illustrations by E.H. Shepard, an artist who served as an artillery officer in the war. Billy later resented his father for turning private moments of childhood glee into glaring fame that triggered brutal harassment in boarding school. 

As the children’s books showered the reclusive author with fame and fortune, Milne’s wife savaged his plan to write a blockbuster book denouncing war. “What’d we fight that war for? Nothing’s changed,” he shouts. “I’ve had enough of making people laugh. I want to make them see!” His wife retorts: “You know what writing a book against war is like? It’s like writing a book against Wednesdays.”

Milne’s antiwar book, Peace with Honour, was brushed aside by the massive acclaim for the children’s stories and Europe’s militaristic marches toward another round of war. His son bitterly rejected royalties from the Pooh books and insisted on joining the army in the Second World War. In the end, in a throat-catching scene, Milne warily greets a battered young veteran who wearily trudges back home.

“The House at Pooh Corner stands in a glade between two dark shadows – the aftermath of one war that had just finished and the dread of one coming,” Frank Cottrell Boyce, the film’s screenwriter, wrote in The Guardian. “No one who fought in the first world war knew it was the first world war. On the contrary, they had been told that they were fighting the war that would end all wars. It must have been with the most bitter irony and failure, then, that Milne’s generation watched their children march away to a war that they had been told would never happen.” 

Frontline Arts Exhibit of Veterans' Images

Veteran artists Ron Erickson and Sarah Mess
at Barron Arts Center (photo/Jan Barry)

An exhibition of artwork by military veterans is on view until June 17 at the Barron Arts Center, 582 Rahway Avenue in Woodbridge, NJ. Gallery hours are Monday thru Friday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday 2 p.m.-4 p.m.

Sponsored by Frontline Arts (formerly known as Combat Paper NJ), which operates the Printmaking Center of New Jersey in Branchburg, these works were created in programs that offer artistic tools and training for novices and practicing artists, providing an opportunity to use art to explore personal experiences and artistic visions.

The Barron Arts Center is in a Romanesque re-purposed library building donated to the town of Woodbridge by the Barron family, including Dr. John Conner Barron, a surgeon with the 69th New York Volunteers during the Civil War.

The show highlights work by veterans and active duty soldiers painted or printed on handmade paper from recycled military uniforms. Much of this art was done in workshops in New Jersey and the Washington, DC area that Frontline Arts provided for veterans and soldiers in various locales including military hospital recovery programs.

Much of the work on display is raw-edged, unpolished, drawn from war experiences, nightmares and worries about living in a world of seemingly endless wars. Some of it is drawn from seeking peaceful times communing with Nature. Some of it is drawn from witnessing the brute impact of war’s assault on Nature.

Included in the show is a rough-hewn piece I did titled “Atom Man,” which incorporates a silkscreened image of Da Vinci’s perfectly proportioned man set in a circle with his arms and legs in various poses. I transformed this image into a facsimile of a handmade military patch that reads “Nuclear War Exercise Survivor.”

When I joined the Army in May 1962, I heard a hushed story of soldiers sent to Nevada to participate in nuclear explosion field exercises. Years later, as a news reporter, I wrote about how many of the “peacetime” atomic explosion participants died of cancer. Other unsettling memories include being in the Army during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, when the threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union was exceedingly real.

Art by other vets explores war images from the First World War to Vietnam and more recent warfare in Afghanistan, Somalia and the Middle East. Other themes are Veterans Affairs health care treatment and horror stories. Some of the art—particularly, startling pieces by Vietnam vets Jim Fallon and Frank Wagner—won VA art contest awards. Some of the bitterest work, listed as done by “Anonymous,” is by active duty soldiers in military health care treatment programs.

Ode to My Mother Who Just Missed the Flowers of Mothers Day

Virginia Graham Crumb, 1945 

For Mom

Virginia Graham Crumb

8/20/24-5/9/18

A lot of life—

93-plus years—

A great lot of life—

Born on an August day in 1924

In Ithaca, lakeside city you loved

And returned to

For high school (Class of ’42)

And delivery of 4 kids

Doctor appointments

Dentist appointments

Christmas shopping

Departure on trains

To places where Jack

Was stationed in the Navy—

Memphis, Tennessee

Chincoteague, Virginia

Charlestown, Rhode Island—

Raising a rambunctious baby

In cramped quarters—

I was that wild thing

Running amok

Amid sailors and teen brides—

And then raising two kids

In a rented house

On an isolated farm road—

And then three kids

In the new house

That Jack built

In Jacksonville—

And then four kids

In a bigger house

In Interlaken—

Where you planted roots

For sixty-five years—

Playing piano at the church,

Singing with the Hot Flashes,

Lunching with friends

And crossing kids at school,

Bookkeeping for Jack’s businesses

And for the church—

Hosting an open house

For constant streams of neighbors,

Friends, travel-weary relatives

And strangers—

Who knew the last stop

Would be a hospital in Rome, NY

With a broken hip,

Pneumonia and baffled confusion,

Where you told a nurse

You were home in Interlaken

--Jan Barry