Beakman's Diner

Where things break out all of a sudden.

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Shadows off the freshly painted wall of The Eastland Hotel in Congress Square. See Heart of Grit below.

http://beakmansdiner.tumblr.com/post/62446690255/forest-citys-heart-of-grit

[beakmansdiner]

We're Sinking. Reflections on a King Tide.

A King Tide is the highest of high tides and when it happens in Portland's East Bayside, salt water surges up through drain pipes and manholes, flooding areas, that may eventually remain under water, in as little as a hundred years.

In a developing effort to alert the public to the land altering reality of determined tide risings, concerned friends of the Bayside community organized a King Tide Party, to "observe, witness, visually document and participate in the intervention".

Rubber ducks and an inflatable moose head were launched, as what looked like a harmless puddle, became a tiny, inconvenient salt water lake.

We're sinking.

  For more information start here: 

http://mylatestart.com/its-a-king-tide-party-and-youre-invited/#more-262

-Smyth 

[beakmansdiner]

Forest City's Heart of Grit.

Portland Maine has a spirit name and it’s spirit name is Forest City

  When I first stepped off the bus in Portland over 30 years ago, I was awe-struck by the gritty heart of Congress Square. It was thrilling and awful and wonderful, complete with a demon-possessed Dunkin Donuts and all sorts of bustle and hustle everywhere. It was everything a young observer in her early twenties could expect from a small northern city. It’s turbulent rhythm and enchantment, composed on sandpaper by lunatic dreamers, made it an oasis of true urban funk. Then one day, long ago, it was torn up and cleaned up, and its mood changed. 

Congress Square is where three roads converge into what can only be realized as the heart and soul of Portland: the ever elusive Arts District.  On one corner sits the brick-tossing State Street Theatre Building, on another corner, The Schwartz, which was once inhabited by high caliber local artists and other creatives. The Schwartz has been closed for renovations since about 2010.

The wedge shaped Hay Building rests on a median between The Portland Museum of Art and the now controversial cement and brick public park we lovers call Congress Square or The Square.

The Square has benches, a stage and an ugly clock, housed in an ugly box, that tells time differently from all the other clocks which, if you haven’t noticed, all offer their own rendition of time. The Square is backed by a huge hotel that changes its name as often as the weather changes. To the right of The Square is a grocery store and The Hammond Heirs Building, meticulously restored, after it burned, in December of 1999, taking one fatality in its wake. 

The now neglected and deteriorating mural, spanning the length of the back entrance wall of the hotel, was painted and repainted by local artist Tony Taylor, and other artists, as a community project which has served as The Square’s backdrop for people of all walks of life. 

People come to The Square to congregate with others, to play, to perform, to be entertained, to protest, to mourn, to celebrate, to watch others unfold unique dramas. 

Congress Square is a place of substantial feeling.

These days our perceptions of The Square are being played as a battle rages to keep it a public space. 

Just last week a bit of it was acquired by the newest owners of the hotel. 

Our cement and brick park, hardly rebuilt for comfort, is now portrayed as dirty and haunted by weak bladdered derelicts and drug dealers. 

Derelicts and drug dealers are nothing new in Portland and their habits are not isolated to Congress Square. 

To claim the square is a toilet, as some have done, is to rob it of its potent urban utility. 

Congress Square is not a morbid, decrepit wasteland that requires rehabilitation through privatization. Perhaps all it really needs is a small ferris wheel and some love for what it really is.

Over the years I have taken photos at Congress Square which, I believe, contradict rumors that high dry winds and urine soaked tumble weeds roll through the desolate heart of Forest City.

Here are some of my favorites:

Photo: The Hammond Heirs Building was meticulously restored after it  burned in December of 1999. There was one fatality.

Photo: The public mural by Tony Taylor and other Portland artists acts as the backdrop for Congress Square.

Photo: People relaxing and playing in the park.

Photo: Congress Square. The Square on the left. The Hay Building is the wedged building on the Right.

Photo: Left to Right: Congress Square/The Square,The Hay Building, The Portland Museum of Art.

Photo: A Fools No More Rally in protest of The Bush Administration.

Photo:Sponsored and unsponsored entertainments occurred frequently in The Square.

Photo: Many locals like to become part of the performance.

Photo: A local man attempts to upstage a performing band. The band attempts to ignore the expressive intruder.

Photo: The Schwartz Building is closed and has been undergoing renovations since 2010. The Portland Museum of Art is to the left. Congress Square is to the right.

Photo: We are never at a loss for attitude. By standers waiting to catch a glimpse of President Obama stand by the boarded up Schwartz Building on the corner of High and Congress. Mr. Obama was attending a special $10,000.00-a-plate dinner at The Portland Museum of Art.

Photo: Some gathered to protest while others gathered to share their religious views across from The Portland Museum of Art where President Obama was expected to attend a $10,000.00 a plate dinner.

Photo: The torch bearer for The Relay Torch Rally for Human Rights.

- Smyth Wolfe

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Me, Carl Jung & What's-His-Name

With all due respect to What’s-His-Name, who showed me his method of doodling with blue ball point pens in painting class.

THE BLUE ABSTRACTS

Trees with Glories Called The Tides. By Smyth Wolfe.

While attending university, as an adult student, I was in the Honor’s Program. 

As part of my senior dissertation I read Carl Jung’s “Symbols of Transformation: A Prelude to a Case of Schizophrenia”.  

In this incredibly thick and expressive book, deep thinking Doctor Jung made an example of a woman of unique tastes and imagination, and ultimately himself as well. 

Jung wrote a profound testimony to the not so simple process of becoming, or as Jung called it, The Process of Individuation. 

To Jung, the human process of individuation is an essential, alchemical process of human growth, where rather than emptily parrot, or echo, the expectations we’ve been taught by rote, to perform by rote, we achieve an individualized pinnacle of self-hood, refined and made whole, from our own raw, inner junk. 

Those who aspire to become autonomous, integral and cognizant human beings, must sift through their own preconceived notions, darkness and light, to recognize,merge and embrace all aspects of themselves. 

The daunting process of becoming real is a departure from protocol, which can defy all the rules of the stamping grounds of the gods, who, we are taught, expect very little of us, while expecting everything from us.

Within this process are symbols, icons and road signs, we share in common from a primordial collective source.

My "doodles", which I now call Blue Abstracts, were a map of my departure from surface self into the depths of mark making, where I was absorbed and renewed.

In many ways for me, they represent a map of my own Process of Individuation. 

The Blueness under My Skin. Smyth Wolfe.

Approx. 3' X 7' paper wall mural drawn with blue Bics.  33 of 50 are pictured here.

  Sheepish. Blue Abstracts gone wild. Smyth Wolfe. 

After working on The Blueness Under my Skin for a few years I happily veered off course. 

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"Happenthing" in the Wild

As I sit here over coffee at Beakman’s Diner, I take inspiration from  a series of tweets by one of my followed followers on twitter. He told a story about a beautiful day he was enjoying that went sour. His story unearthed mine.

Read it like you would a series of tweets.

Long ago I went out on a special "Women Only" Outward Bound weekend. 

I brought my own backpack but the instructors insisted I use their equipment instead, and leave my pack behind.

While hiking uphill under a heavy pack, I tried to “zen with the woods", but one of the participants kept talking at me, trying to pry me open like I was a nut or a clam.  

It was unpleasant and stressful.

  Fast forward.

  That night before bedding down we left our iodine treated H2O bottles & supplies outside our tents. 

Deep in the night I heard foot steps through our camp. Next morning, after breakfast, I became seriously ill.

My head split open and I suffered a complete body purge.

I thought I was going to die.

All I wanted to do was lie down, but the instructors wouldn’t let me.

No pain killers allowed. Not even an aspirin. It was raining & the rain gear I was wearing was about three to four sizes bigger than me.

We gathered in a circle for a “talk" when a guy, who was a temporary and extraneous addition to our tour, appeared.

I don’t remember the talk. I was so sick, I fell asleep standing up.

But what I do remember about him, was when I woke up, still standing, and completely buried in the blur of sickness, he approached me and quietly said  in my face “Fuck you".

There wasn’t much I could do or say. It took everything I had to stay standing. I made a note in my mind. Told myself I didn’t hear it. Comforted myself with self accusations of insanity.

The man left. We moved along to The Ropes. I walked like a zombie.

  What got me through The Ropes Course was shear ire.

Climbing ropes I couldn’t climb, while swearing blue streaks & curses, I transcended the most debilitating aspects of my sickness.

But I did not venture too much further with the challenge.

I stubbornly turned down a risky jump when I noticed a portion of my safety equipment was faulty. 

There’s just so much that can be against you on any given day, in any given situation, before you have to gather yourself and stand against it.

When it was time to go home & I retrieved my empty backpack from storage, it had acquired an overwhelming smell of vomit inside of it.

It was an odor that never went away.

[beakmansdiner]

Is THAT a CHICKEN?

Negative reflections on a difficult painting I painted.

I have true and pressing complaints about my largest painting, Culling the Once and Future Moron.

My painting Culling the Once and Future Moron bothers me.

Its a strange, possibly goofy painting, born of ire left to dry out in the sunshine.

It daunts me with its belligerent and irksome flaws.

It hangs on a wall taking up six feet across and over three feet up and down, in my private space.

Shown only once publicly, its an unflattering, rude and possibly vulgar commentary against sexually predacious behavior.

I dislike it’s composition and theme a lot.

I think it’s a disturbance in a society that fancies itself peace loving and enlightened. So its a stupid bastard. A loco turd. Corrupt. Vile. AND if its more boring than all that, then its shoddy work whose alchemy isn’t well resolved and my drawing skills need improvement.

I feel awful for having painted it because I’m stuck with it.

But just a few days ago, while sick in bed, with my head threatening to tear off my shoulders in a messy explosion, the painting, my painting about the comeuppance of a sexual predator, did something it rarely does. It looked beautiful.

Migraine aside, the light must have been hitting it just right.

It was luminous in all the right ways, it’s color subtleties surfaced nicely into a soft blush.

More a commentary about sexual offense than is culturally desired.

Left to right:

A devil /pig-dog / satyr/ monster, who wears a medallion of a woman’s symbol upside down on his chest, has in hand a young woman on a leash.

My rendering of the leash is terrible. Its flat and lacks detail or dimension, but it’s tension is good as the young captive tries to regain her balance.

The Huntress, who may be Artemis, or a Soccer Mom, is armed with Apollo’s bow. She is flanked by two hounds: Faerie Hunting Dogs with pretty pink ears.

Artemis the Soccer Mom, has just released a fiery magical arrow against a strong wind.

I like how I painted the release of the arrow and The Huntress’s stature, but I never got the arrow’s angle right and it appears it will fly past the chest of the offending pig-dog, missing him entirely, and hitting someone else somewhere off canvas.

The Huntress also carries Bridgid’s Bough in her quiver, a peace offering, just in case.

But offering a stick to a dangerous tyrant as a gesture of acquiescence is actually a fate worse than death if you think about it, so enter the skeleton as a solution.

A Skeleton? Really?

I’m slightly embarrassed by skeletons. They are everywhere and common place. They seem ridiculous to paint and they always look happy. This is my opinion. I think skeletons are dumb, but I also think they are great, and I use them because I like them.

In Culling the Once and Future Moron the skeleton is of course, a personification of death. Death’s boney appendages are ready to either catch the harried monster as he falls backward from the trajectory of the arrow, or to shove him forward into the arrows path, destroying the world’s worst foe forever.

Faerie Hunting Dogs

I read somewhere, a very long time ago, about Faerie Hunting Dogs and was taken with the concept of magical hounds with special pink ears.

But while painting the ready pups into the picture, I began to worry that the lore of Faerie Hunting Dogs was nothing more than a mean spirited yarn and wink for overt pogroms by vicious, heterosexist villagers, against same gendered people trysting with one another in the meadows.

Perhaps this is why the dogs are set into the composition so badly. The largest dog looks like she’s jumping into the huntress’s pelvis and the smallest dog is backing out.

If I was using Photoshop, I could have easily scaled down each dog and pushed them back a bit, but this is a composition on canvas with oils, a work of imagination with little compositional forethought and a lot of trial and error, I lost patience with.

I’m not sure why I thought I wouldn’t notice this cramped situation around the protagonist when I was rushing to finish it. But I did like how I painted the dogs’ haunches, and was very attached to the littlest dog stuck in the unenviable position of guarding the rear.

I was hesitant to sacrifice them by repositioning them.

“Is that a chicken?”

“Is that a chicken?” A woman asked me at my show.

“Is what a chicken?” I asked the woman.

She pointed at the big dog with it’s clumsy pink Faerie Hunting Dog ears drawn back in a moment of high conflict.

Then I saw the chicken.

Ow.

In Conclusion.

It isn’t finished.

When I look at Culling the Once and Future Moron for any amount of time, to watch it’s breathing, some of it’s body parts bolt and flinch. The Huntress sticks her tongue out at the hunted. The Hunted’s arm jolts.

Most of the hands do not match and look unfinished.

The Captive’s breast aureolas lack nipples in most light.

All these things mean the drawing, the painting is not flowing well in places and needs more work.

Showing it, publicly in 2005 was a risky choice that resulted in overt social consequences. Mostly older men mumbling rude sexual invectives at me on the street!

- Smyth Wolfe 2013

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Quickly.

Beakman's Diner inspirational quote by artist Smyth Wolfe.

[beakmansdiner]

Sometimes I make visual notes to ponder possibly pointless points with pith.

While drawing The Ladder of Success I was thinking about the concept of success, its detached relationship to effort, and hall monitors.

Hall monitors, you may remember, snuck around the halls of grade school looking for aberrations to bust. Ever watchful and waiting they occupied a sanctioned place just a little over our heads.  It didn't matter if they were someone's grandmother wearing pink, or young and obscenely preppy. They were hall monitors to be feared and revered. 

Little did we know then, hall monitors never go away. For some of us, they're at every junction of our lives. If they don't like us,for whatever their reasons, they can block our success.

And theres a plan for that!