tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20588196.post6975999204556809138..comments2023-06-14T07:49:15.087-04:00Comments on Artdeal Magazine: Comic HeavenAddison Parkshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17761481663107145487noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20588196.post-71809509150797929232013-08-06T16:34:38.283-04:002013-08-06T16:34:38.283-04:00By the way - I just read what you wrote about Mars...By the way - I just read what you wrote about Marsden Hartley - really good and on point. A very nice piece. Nothing I could relate to of course!<br />--Jim BallaAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20588196.post-8139378267557174772013-07-03T08:50:42.200-04:002013-07-03T08:50:42.200-04:00Funny you should talk about Hartley.I sailed down ...Funny you should talk about Hartley.I sailed down to Gloucester and with the rain decided to get off the boat and hang out on Main St.In one of the funkier cafe's where the owner has thankfully no sense of marketing, i bided my time with a frozen yogurt which was way to big.But it kept me busy while I perused a book that they had on Gloucester Artists from Fitz Hugh Lane to around the beginning of the millenium.Of course hartley is in it .In the text, there was a reference to him feeling out of place among the other Gloucester Artists due to the influence of abstraction on his work.Now I found it interestng that he did not find inspiration among the fishing boats in the harbor but up in the noman's land of Dogtown.My mother used to take us there for pick nicks .It looked still somewhat like Hartley''s rendiition of it,rocks and grass still mowed down by sheep.My friend Jim Falck went there recently and said it is all overgrown.No longer do you find the puctuation of hard outcroppings among the fields. Just lots of thorny vines. It is a sad place indeed full of foundations of the vibrant village that once existed there.In the time of Hartley it was inhabited by a few outcasts.Strange that he should look inland to this melancholy site.It reminds me of the poem "Directive" by Robert Frost another melancholic type like Hartley where Frost meditates on lives lived and the few foundatons and bric a brac that remain of a once lively village.I think Hartley must of loved the bullt in abstraction of the site and the fact that it was not a subject preferred by the local artists.It is inward looking and like so much good and great art it is a meditation on time: Geologic time with all the erratics placed there by the ice age and human time with all the cellar holes.It is dark and deep and far from the hustle and bustle and glitter of the sunlit harbor.<br /><br />On a truly sad note,the skyline of Gloucester has been permanently marred by the construction of enormous aeolians that loom above the skyline once defined by the Portuguese Church and the tower of city Hall.<br /><br />Martin MugarAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com