… keep coming. Pretty amazing variety of locations for the Falmouth series, started around Jan. 13th or so. It may extend to next week or the week after that. But soon it will end, as Spring hiking season kicks in for real after the beginning of daylight savings time. We start out simply enough in Steptoe, Washington (state) for the 1st 6, but then with the 7th we’re in abstract land on the Sgt. Pepper album cover, which has suddenly become the absorber of Shining weirdness, arranging it in a logic pyramid of 1-10 (tetractys). This marks the start of stage 2 of the Falmouth series, as stage 1 becomes my first, actual animation of sorts (LINK). Stage 2 tends to feature more standalone works, although not entirely. Collage 8 finds us in Maine, in Collage 9 we’re back on the set of The Shining, Collage 10 takes us back to Steptoe Butte in Washington state, and Collage 11 back to Sgt. Pepper. Collage 12 and 13 are set in my hometown of Blue Mtn., the first use of that setting in my collages as far as I remember. Then in Collage 14 we’re in outer space. Collage 15 and 16 take us to *Mythopolis*, which I know I’ve never used in a collage before. Collage 18 is a combo of English Lake District (foreground) and Second Life (background). Collage 19 is set in the Georgia Mtns. Collage 20 and 21 find us in the Greenup Gill of the Lake District, where my modern collages started in 2004. Almost 10 years ago (!).
Then Steptoe Butte comes into play again in Collage 22, and in Collage 23 we’re purely in Second Life, around a small, beautifully landscaped pool of water on the Jeogeot continent (same as in background of Collage 18). American author Sherwood Anderson walks along the bank of the lake from his Ripshin home in Virginia set on the back end from us. On the opposite side, to our front, is positioned his unique gravestone, with the epitaph “Life not death is the great adventure”. A giant corndog and a miniature version of Mouse Island, Ohio, shaped like a corndog, lay side by side in front of him along the same bank, as if they have been jointly pulled out of the water. This is obviously Lake Erie in a way, since Mouse Island is found in those very waters, the pool is roughly shaped like Erie (a corndog-style shape itself!), and Anderson’s Winesburg is set nearby, based on Clyde, Ohio. Thus the title: “Erie Pool”. The place where Anderson walks perhaps represents the city of Elyria, where in 1907 Anderson started a successful paint business and then subsequently had a nervous breakdown, which he calls a turning point in his life. Afterwards he devoted himself to writing. Here’s a description from wikipedia…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherwood_Anderson
On Thursday, November 28, 1912, Anderson came to his office in a slightly nervous state. According to his secretary, he opened some mail, and in the course of dictating a business letter became distracted. After writing a note to his wife, he murmured something along the lines of “I feel as though my feet were wet, and they keep getting wetter.”[note 1] and left the office. Four days later, on Sunday December 1, a disoriented Anderson entered a drug store on East 152nd Street in Cleveland and asked the pharmacist to help figure out his identity. Unable to make out what the incoherent Anderson was saying, the pharmacist discovered a phone book on his person and called the number of Edwin Baxter, a member of the Elyria Chamber of Commerce. Baxter came, recognized Anderson, and promptly had him checked into the Huron Road Hospital in downtown Cleveland, where Anderson’s wife (who he would hardly recognize) went to meet him.[65]
Although the story varies as Anderson embellishes it in later years, it is probably true that he cast himself as a bonafide writer afterwards. Shortly he dumped his practical wife in favor of a radical artist (Tennessee Claflin Mitchell), his first novel was published several years later, and then Winesburg, Ohio, his literary triumph, emerged in 1919.
In looking at the collage in question closer I believe the bank stolling Anderson, having emerged from a dip behind him where he might have gotten his “feet wet” (see breakdown description above), is Sherwood Anderson The Writer, freshly emerged, like a butterfly, from Sherwood Anderson the Businessman. This is *his* Second Life, if you will. He is steps closer to his own grave, true, but colors are more vivid, and the ground seeming more sure to him. And I think this is also Sherwood Anderson of Winesburg, Ohio, assured and confident in his writing and artistic skills at last, and joining the greats of American literature, even joining such luminaries as fellow Ohioan President Rutherford B. Hayes, looming large in the upper right corner of the collage. Hayes (Fremont; county seat) actually hailed from the same county (Sandusky) as Sherwood (Clyde). There is also the strange story about Hayes being the first president of the United States who wasn’t actually the president. Hayes owned Mouse Island, and his Big Chimney project seems to be a cover-up for post-American activties. Hayes (apparently through remote viewing techniques) knew about Anderson, and knew that his Winesburg, Ohio was important in the coming, new era. Hayes also knew about politician George Norris, also from Clyde and also a father figure like Sherwood. In the Hayes papers (location: Fremont, Ohio), there is a folder labelled “Big Chimney”, seeming to concern Mouse Island. But I cannot speak more of that at the present moment. R. “Booger” Hayes, as he is sometimes called in this New Era landscape, knew about the Mouse Island-corndog connection as well.
Are the “sticks” protruding from the end of the giant corndog and Mouse Island alike about to trip up Anderson as he strolls a now more assured life path toward his grave? What of the presence of the Ol’ Biking Baker Bloch just beside him? Anderson seems to walk parallel to a row boat in the pool. Are they one and the same? Does the pool represent his life? (a “body” of memories) And what of Ripshin on the far side, his Virginia home for the last 15 years of his life?
Hucka D.:
The corndog is a Room 237 style mystery. Jack and the 237 woman embrace to the right. But it’s instead one of the figures from the Judgement Card of the tarot. This is a mystery of sex in part. A mystery of what is a man, what is a woman. The corndog and island are male and female genitalia — side by side. Once again we must ask what is in the room.
Sunklands 