Win The Bridge Sweepstakes!

 The Owl's Hill Art Center is tremendously excited to bring you something really big! Running from November 9-15, the "Win The Bridge" sweepstakes offers the opportunity to enter for a chance of winning this beautiful 30X40 inch framed masterwork, by renowned Crumbleville artist Tom Howell Gardner. It's a simple proposition: keep an eye on our Facebook page. When you see posts for the "Win The Bridge Sweepstakes," simply respond, "Where's that confounded bridge?" in the comments, and you will be entered for a chance at winning this beauty! Where's that confounded bridge? How about hanging on your wall! The sweepstakes runs out soon, so best get on the stick! Full entry details and sweepstakes rules can be found here: https://dmcowlshill.blogspot.com/p/win-bridge-sweepstakes-rules.html

Being The Light

 

These past few fraught days, my mind's been on subject of community, and what we can do as individuals, as caring, creative,  intelligent people to, if nothing else, leave where we've been a little bit the nicer for our having been there. It's the responsibilities that accompany freedom that get overlooked, and sadly as well, it seems simple common decency is being left by the wayside too.  It's not a good way to go forward, divided like this, over what boils down to the fear of those different from us, and our failure to confront  some awful and tragic factors in the equations of our nation's history. Among myriad other explanations for this sorry state of affairs is a failure in education. And that failure has its roots in a lack of honesty, like too much else these days. 

What we can do is to conduct ourselves well.  

Be honest. Be Kind. Be Open. Live your life as a good example. There seem but two types of people anymore, good guys, or assholes. And nobody really wants to be an asshole, do they? Really? Of course not, but sometimes the odds are stacked pretty high, one way or another, and what seems like it should obvious to many, is perceived--or likely, simply not even considered--by as many others, as something entirely different. Generally filed under  cognitive dissonance..  And that's a tough nut to crack.

But it's crackable. Not always, but sometimes...as long as there's meat left inside tender enough to be usable. The question is how to crack said  nut. And a sort of 'subliminal re-education' is the answer...influencing through example. Sounds pretty nebulous, but it's not really. We're back to leading by example, and being the light.

Examples 

These two shots showed up as memories on Facebook recently. They are old images of celebration: Irie Sol above, and the women who were the crew at Saylon Seven, back in 2013.

These shots showed up in the days following the Express Yourself October Extravaganza at the Owl's Hill Arts Center--an imaginary celebration at an imaginary place of wonders, that celebrated community, creativity, collaboration and the out-of-the-box entrepreneurship that is a hallmark of such ventures. Which is just what these two images are celebrating.

Irie Sol played on nice night at Artisan Forge Studios in Eau Claire. They were helping us celebrate something special: the Forge and the arts community here, for a group of travel writers. We were showing off, all of us there, and it was beautiful, true and fun. The band draws across cultures and genres, joyous, impassioned, righteously outraged, singing songs of the one true love and setting the children to dance away the night. It was sweet, and these gentlemen have been at it a long time. The message doesn't change.

I don't remember the occasion of the Saylon Soirée, but that was a fun one too, and likely in celebration five years open. Don't quote me on that, though. My friend Sabrina realized a dream in opening her own place, and she's still going strong. Her salon has been a mainstay now for many years, a community unto itself, interacting with clients, the business community, the city and whoever else may come along.  Saylon Seven is one of many local businesses run by women that rock. It's the vibe. It's the inclusivity. It's the way they do what they do, big picture and small. And as a by-the-by, of that group of women shot seven years ago, at least six of them are presently in business for  themselves.

So yeah, you can look at these images and feel the backstory. It feels like something cool, just looking at it. It's an energy, and it can be shared. It needs to be shared. And that, brothers and sisters, is our job as creatives: how to make these messages and the values they carry so fucking cool that no one will not want to be a part of something so awesome & real?

The Express Yourself October Extravaganza

 

Things are different this year, across the board. Some things we can do very little about, others we have some control over. This Halloween weekend, 10/31-11-1, Owl's Hill is partnering with some friends to present the Express Yourself October Extravaganza. The Studios & shops of Owl's Hill will be open, Walnut Feent will be playing in the Gallery all weekend, and our good friends at Express Yourself and JML Tattoo will be co-hosting this event, bringing their own special magic into the proposition. 

This is a family-friendly and socially responsible weekend, and that just means things will be extra nice. Lessons, exhibits, music, art for sale, and a special Owl's Hill Enticement: come by over the weekend and participate. Enter for the art drawing in the Gallery--no purchase necessary. Walnut Feent will draw a winner Sunday at noon, and the results will be available on our Facebook page.

One Of Several Options

To The Power Of We

Some stories just take some telling. Penitence Biddiford's is one of those. But hers is an important story to tell, for the concepts underlying all these various misadventures are integral for understanding the dynamic success of the Owl's Hill Arts Center, and rather serve as some good rules to abide by in general.

Her studio gone dim and shadowy, Penitence Biddiford lighted three old-time oil lamps, and placed them on pedestals about the covered walnut statue. The grain caught the soft glow and began slowly to come alive. She moved about light as a fairy, choosing the words, remembering the songs. Time seemed to go all shifty on us. "Bella called Connie a couple days later. Her Grandfather wanted to meet us at the Cyclamate to talk things over. Dewey inisited, so we went."

Penitence Biddiford wore the evening draped about her, all the purple, all the shadows, all the mustering of light, and she took up a corner of the tarp draping her statue. She whispered, “Grandfather,” and pulled it away. We stood before something amazing.

A great mountain of a man came to life there in the light of those lamps. Immense and powerful, he might have stepped out to join us, were he not carved of walnut. What must have been acres of denim went into the wooden coveralls he sported, ‘Sears & Roebuck’ carved plainly onto the suspender buckles. Chore boots as big as barges graced his great feet, and a kindness, a tremendous warmth radiated out from small, close-set eyes, squinting as if he’d misplaced his glasses, or was perhaps just very stoned. He gripped a straw hat in his left hand, and his right was firmly in his coverall pocket, busy. Old Farmer Feent. He’d taken more than three years to carve. 

“It’s him,” I said, and she nodded. “He’s as beautiful as I thought he would be.”

At The Cyclamate

The Cyclamate Tavern sits way down at the end of Aburrido Street, just before the park along the river. It’s a dingy place on the brightest of days, run by the three formidable Sweet sisters, Sugar, Honey and Candy. Mountainous women, they’d inherited the place from their no account father, Clarence “Lefty” Sweet, a poor businessman and a drinking partner of Rance Biddiford.

“At least the place smells more like patchouli than anything else, these days,” she said. That wasn’t always the case. “We got down there early, the three of us, and the sisters seemed to know what was up. Somehow they always seem to. Big Candy Sweet grabbed Dewey and whispered in his ear, then left. The place had cleared out except for us. Just like that. So Dewey suggested that, as with the bar left graciously open and at our disposal, we might as well start drinking. Nervous as we were, we did.”

Penitence. Penitence. Penitence. Nets of spells and enchantments she casts about her without thinking. Her voice carried shadow and light entwined, and she moved about in the oil-lamp glow spectral and serpentine, no more than moving whisps of smoke herself, taking form and shape from whatever she happened to be closest to. The looming walnut Farmer filled my consciousness. And I was tremendously stoned.

“Old Farmer Feent showed up two hours later. Connie and I were dancing on the bar to Bob Seger, Dewey was playing bartender and  trying to peek up our skirts, when a great blast of cool air rushed in and filled the place with smells of moss and rain and growing things. Great footsteps rang off the floorboards, and a laugh loud as thunder burst out, when Old Farmer Feent rounded the corner and saw us. 

‘Whatcha see up there, Dew-Berry?’ he hollered out, a beatific grin splitting his pumpkin-sized face. ‘Nice, is it?’ and Dewey laughed and did a jig step for him. ‘Prettier than daybreak, up there on the Great Divide!’”

Penitence Biddiford solidified before me. “To tell you the truth, there’s a lot I don’t remember about that evening. I do remember Old Farmer Feent telling us a story of a long ago love-triangle. My mother, my father, and Young Farmer Feent. I know. It’s as messed up as it sounds. Mother’s always been a beauty, and a fickle one at that. She led those two on from elementary school, til she finally married my father.” The old man is a sore and complicated subject. “Daddy was always handsome and clever. Good at using people, and not much else. A showoff too, and he enjoyed making other people look bad. Like the poor Young Farmer. I can just imagine what a dick Daddy was to him.” Her eyes well up at the thought.

“That poor man!” she wails into the studio, to Walnut Feent, to me and the world. “He looked at me so sorrowfully, tears cascading from his close-set, squinty little eyes and he began to sob inconsolably, setting great waves to rolling beneath those seven acre coveralls he wore. “‘You know what she told me?’ he blubbered. It took him a moment to spit out the words. ‘She said she’d never go out with a farmer!’ And then she married Daddy. I guess. After that, I don’t remember much. I remember Dewey dancing on the bar to Bob Seger. I remember Connie wiggling around on Old Farmer Feent’s lap. I think I remember Old Farmer Feent taking shots of FeentWater out of my navel. I’m pretty sure Farmer Feent Jr. had to come down and take us home.” She shakes her head.

But things were different after that night. For starters, an army of deadbeats, reprobates and ne’er-do-wells materialized, in brand new coverwalls, and made things right at the Mill. Broken windows were repaired, new whitewash applied, decades of crapped hauled out and scrubbed away. The boiler was replaced, thanks to a loan from her late father’s bank. Loan sharks and bookies went other places. The crazy bastard back in the hills had an unfortunate tractor accident. And people began to come to her, wanting to be part of things. Wanting to be a part of the Owl’s Hill Arts Center.

“And that’s how it started,” she says. “If it weren’t for that sainted man, there’d be none of this. The Prime Mover. Whatever he did, however he did it, he brought people together who dream the same dream. He made us Us. He made us We. And We have made this.” She doesn’t want to talk anymore, and I thank her for her time and leave.

Saint Feent of the Summertimes

The miracles he wrought were small ones, perhaps, but resonant. That army of deadbeats? These days they’re known as the Feent Corps, and they deploy from town to town, cleaning things up and being good role models. Miracles of Amity and Solidarity, Kindness and Regularity, Old Farmer Feent loved ideas, he loved women, and he loved drinking. But most of all, he loved caring, and he cared about everything and everyone. And while Old Farmer Feent’s monstrous boots are a pair we can never hope to fill, we can aspire to and achieve a reasonable measure of Feentliness ourselves, simply by caring about people and things other than ourselves.  That’s not asking too much of you, is it? To channel your inner Feent and see what happens? Go on. Try. It’ll make the world a nicer place.

An Unlikely Savior

P.B.Biddiford: Part Two-'On The Origins Of Owl's Hill'

 It is indeed generally darkest right before dawn, the moon long down and the  stars winked out 'til next time. Just before the first birds begin to sing, and the gray of false dawn settles in. Dark. That's where the Biddiford sisters found themselves: a long, dark night, with no promise of dawn to follow. A mountain of sketchy debt, accumulated by their  late father, seemed insurmountable. And wolves howling from every direction. demanding a bone or two.  The Biddiford sisters were in a tight spot. A real tight spot.

Penitence Biddiford let her story unfold slowly, the twists and turns and colorful characters swirling about like reefer smoke in a high-ceilinged studio, in an old mill, with the sun setting low.  She stayed with her sister Constance, in Connie's big apartment at the Biddiford Academy, where she was Administrator. The Academy sits high atop Schleprock's Bluff, looking off westwards, a magnificent pile of a building, all wings and Great Halls, cut from native fieldstone. Another legacy of dour Cerberus Biddiford, a Biddiford had helmed the Academy since its founding in 1875.

"Connie hosted a euchre game every Wednesday night up there. It was tradition." Penitence Biddiford shakes her head, a rueful, sweetly stoned smile playing across her features. "We tried so damn hard to keep it all between us: just Connie, me and Daddy's lawyer, old Dewey Cheatham. And I do mean old. He was Grandpa's lawyer, too. He  was the only man they let play Wednesdays, which was handy, once I got back. Salty and smart though he may be, Dewey hadn't any more answers than we did. We were stymied, and ready to cry one Wednesday, talking about all this, when we realized someone else was with us, listening from the doorway."

Bella Feent-Swain, an imposing and immense woman, had heard the whole thing. The wife of Ruben 'Tater-Boy' Swain, the potato magnate, she was a sorority sister of Connie's, and a close confidant.  "I'm surprised, really, that Connie hadn't said anything to her before. Those two are tight." But she hadn't, and who could blame her, given the sorry and sordid circumstances?

And Then The Cat Got Out Of The Bag

"Bella stood there looking at the three of us, outrage and sorrow, and pure righteous fury building. I've never seen a person's face go beet red in so little time. Shoulders on up. She was pissed. She said to us, 'Sisters, Dewey, this aggression cannot stand. These swamp-hounds, sloth-devils and toe-jammers need to be chased back under the rocks and into the hollow logs from whence they've come.  May I share this sorrowful story with my Grandfather?' Neither Connie nor I realized the full import of the question, but old Dewey sure did.

"'Would you please, Bella?' he asked her." 

To Be Continued!

Meanwhile, check out these examples of work from Terra Finis Studios. More on them to come to!

Just Don't Call Her Penitence (Part One Of Two)

Second In Our Series

Meet Penitence B. Biddiford

Sometimes a person and a project, or a place, become inextricably linked, through circumstance or story. More often than not, it's a local phenomenon, like the case of the Biddifords of Crumbleville, and the Owl's Creek Mill. 

Generations of Crumblevillians have ground their meal at  the Mill, founded in 1867 by Cerberus Baal Biddiford, a stern man returned from Gettysburg without his left leg. Biddiford progeny were plentiful throughout the ensuing years, and the 'Owl's Hill Brand'  was renowned for its purity, and the lightness of products baked with it. But the lights went out on the milling operation in the late 1980s, and the mill sat vacant for a good many years, until the current Biddiford's father repurposed the Old Mill into an antiques mall. Owl's Hill Antiques, a dark and musty place, was L. Rancide Biddiford's brainchild, a depository for random items snagged at auction or estate sale, worn out and generally of dubious value, as antiques or otherwise.  Dirty farm paraphernalia, old horse-shoes,  nails, hinges and the like. The moldy detritus of marginal lives lived and passed barely remarked, but maybe worth a few bucks in the tourist trade.  

"You can too polish a turd," Penitence Beneficia Biddiford states, in her no-nonsense manner. "Daddy did it all his life." She fixes me with her ice-blue eyes, taking my measure. It feels like frost-beams will blast out of those eyes if you say something dumb. 

Ms. Biddiford--P.B. to her close friends, Ms. Biddiford to everyone else--is showing me around the Gallery at the Owl's Hill Art Center, on our way back to her studio. A small, intense woman dressed all in black, she has the air about her of a mean Fifth Grade teacher. And I'm feeling like a Fifth Grade dope on his best behavior. She whirls raven black hair about in a spray, enjoying the unnatural sense of unease she so easily imparts unto others. Particularly unto men.

Her pride and delight in the gallery, however, shine through as brightly as the afternoon  sunlight does, reflecting off the Mill Pond, flooding through the big windows, illuminating color, shape and form into whole new sweeps of meaning. She nods and smiles, without holding back. "This" she says, then shakes her head.

"No, Daddy just let the Mill go to musty, moldy hell," she tells me. We've entered her studio now, dark and cool, huge windows looking out over the pond. It is filled with her work: modernistic pieces of polished steel and aluminum, bolted together, pointing 

Ms. Biddiford, in her studio at Owl's Hill

random fingers towards a distant, unknowable and disconcerting future. "This was a place for him to hide out and drink, bullshit with his friends and pretend he was doing business." She sighs heavily.

"And not that I cared, really. It seemed like he was making it work. I was out of here, gone to college, art school, an MFA and living in Rhode Island when his liver quit. I guess he was upstairs for a few days before they found him. We had to do something with the mill, so I came back to Crumbleville."

What she found upon her return was, to say the least, dismaying.

"It was awful," she says, "it was totally effed up. Connie (her sister, Constance Judgement Biddiford, Administrator of the Biddiford Academy,) and I had no idea it was so bad, or what to do, really."

How Bad Was It?

We are standing in her her studio, before what seems to be an anomaly: a great piece of black walnut, that must have been seven feet in height, and nearly that in diameter. It stands among metalwork that might have graced the homes of well-heeled friends of the Jetsons. A dark green tarp covers what is obviously a finished piece of work. Penitence Biddiford continues.

"Daddy owed money. Everywhere, to everybody. Three mortgages, bookies, bank loans, private loans--some legit, others frighteningly not so...loan sharks, the power company, dope dealers, you name it. Daddy covered for those deadbeats at the Mill, as long as they kept him company. And they split like fleas off a dead dog when he passed. Or tried to."

She looks out over the pond, silent for a long moment. It isn't an easy tale to tell. "And all those sons of bitches he owed money to came after my sister and I. There were liens placed,  loans called, various foreclosures threatened. Some bastard from back in the hills was going to burn down the mill, our house, the Academy etc., unless we settled with him. At least Mother wasn't around to witness this shit. Daddy's one decent act was to make sure she had enough money to move in with her sister upon his demise, which she did happily. But that left just Connie and me, and we were fucking scared."

It's hard to imagine this woman scared of anything, frankly. But she was. You can just tell. She leans against a broad window sill and pushes the slider over, just enough to let  smoke out. She lights a cigarette, letting the smoke waft out in great purply clouds that catch the low light nicely. It smells like reefer.

"Seriously. It would have been easier to take what we could, if we could, and walk away. But fuck that. Wasn't going to happen. We did not know what we were going to do, or how we were going to do it, but we were goddamn well going to do something..."   

Her voice trails off and she hands the joint over. I thanked her. It's nice to take that edge off, and she seemed a little nicer herself, stoned. And to tell you the truth, being a little stoned sure helped to digest what came next.

Part Two: The Unexpected Savior

"He looked at me so sorrowfully, tears cascading from his  close-set, squinty little eyes, and he began to sob, setting  great waves to rolling beneath those seven acre coveralls he wore. 'You know what she told me?' he said to me. It took him a moment before he could finally blubber it out: 'She said she'd never go out with a farmer!'"

 

Art + Capitalism = Redemption? Maybe!

Redemption. Perhaps we'd best consider that one for a moment. Yes, there are shades of the Biblical woven all through the notion, and into elements of the stories we'll share here as well, particularly this one. And it's pert near a dead-ringer for the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

Meet Morris Quant, age 33, proprietor of the recently launched "Apothecary For Our Times," otherwise known as Four-Eyed Moe's, located in the Owl's Hill Annex.

 Open since the beginning of the Pandemic, Moe's has not unsurprisingly been met with open arms by a populace feverish for relief of any sort. And Moe's has that covered. 

Pharmaceuticals, holistics and a dispensary under one roof, Quant carries hard to find over-the-counter products, such as Geri-Gel Analgesic Dentifrice and the locally sourced FeentWater bottled water; garden-variety psychotropics and sleep-aids, as well as a  selection of some very good weed, also sourced locally. But it was not always thus for Mr. Quant. On the up and up, that is.

The Redemption Part

Yeah. Young Moe really liked a couple of things: basketball and chemistry. He grew up in the sticks, graduating from Summertime High School, class of 2005, Valedictorian and a serious power forward. The plan was to enlist in the Marines, do a couple hitches, take the loot and major in Chem at Carbonic State afterwards. But his knee blew out terribly in boot camp, and that was that. He came back hurting across the board. Moe tried to help his old man around the farm as best he could for awhile, but he never cared much for farming in the first place, and the family farm sat nearly vertical, aslant in those hills. That made the farming suck doubly bad.

But there was more money to be made, further back  in the Summertimes, and Moe lit out, not to be seen for months at a time. When he did show up, it was the dark of night, and that old truck he drove didn't have lights. A cloud of dust in the moonlight, a door slams shut, and he's gone again. But not forgotten.

"Uh huh, you betcha. I was cooking meth," he says, staring at you intensely as he speaks. "And it was good. Oh yeah, it was good." He looks rueful, fully cognizant of the plague of his own cooking that he'd loosed upon the populace for a good many years. "But that was bad, and I got busted, like I deserved. And I did the time they gave me, and fuck them and all that, but I come out for the good, see?" He waves an arm expansively, indicating the sweep and scope of his little shop. "You looking for something? We probably got it."

But, you may be wondering, how did a jailbird like Four-Eyed Moe transition from meth chef on parole, to up and coming entrepreneur? 

"It was the kindness of that sainted man," he says emphatically,  nodding toward the portrait  of an immense, beneficent looking gentleman in overalls. "Old Farmer Feent. See, my dad died while I was in the can, and old Farmer Feent offered my mom a nice price for the place, bought the cows, that shitty old tractor, everything. She moved off with her sister, and when I got out he gave me a job at the bottling plant, bottling FeentWater..  He always got a kick outta me and my ideas, and when I come up with this one, he liked it so much, he staked me. Set me up. Bless him, that nice old man, old Farmer Feent!" Moe's eyes well up, and he adds, "You betcha."

So there you go, comrades, a small tale of redemption, told by old Four-Eyes, signifying I'm not sure what, other than the importance--nay, the necessity--of kindness. Of believing and trusting in those deserving, even if they used to cook meth back in the hills. Sometimes that's just what it takes. And check out what Four-Eyes learned to do in the can: 

The  Art Part