| Biographical Non-Fiction posted November 29, 2015 | Chapters: |
...5 6 -7- 8... 
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If sculptures could talk.
A chapter in the book Poetry and Poison
Poetry and Poison: Chapter 7
by Sis Cat
| Background When both parents died eleven weeks apart, Andre Wilson analyzed their poetry to discover what happened before, during, and after their marriage. He now searches his father's sculptures. |
LAST PARAGRAPH OF PREVIOUS CHAPTER:
The Poets of the Square Table disbanded their fellowship until the following month. My appearance there on August 27, 2012 marked the first time I shared my parents’ poetry in public after their deaths weeks earlier. I did not know then that when I later became a poet, writer, and storyteller and created a spreadsheet listing hundreds of readings and performances, I would list the Poets of the Square Table as my first public event. The poets planted the idea in me of telling my parents’ story through their poetry, but I had overlooked their second idea: telling my parents’ story through Fred’s sculpture. Jessie wrote that Woman of Pain “is a connecting link in our marriage.” If I can find the sculpture, I could find the “connecting link.”
“Is that what I think it is? Is that blood?”
My left eye closed. My right eye squinted at the Kodak slide I held up to the light. Boxed carousels of my father’s slides crowded around me on the bed. I lacked a slide projector. Instead, I examined his slides—thousands of them—one by one in search of Woman of Pain, the sculpture Mom reported Dad gave her when they first met at an art fashion show where she modeled and he exhibited. My mother had concluded her written account of their first meeting by writing:
The little sculpture, Woman of Pain, is still in our art collection. It is not for sale; it is a connecting link in our marriage.
If I can find that sculpture, I can discover why my parents connected. Oh, Andre, why didn’t you grab Dad’s slide projector, too, when you rescued his art slides from his Albuquerque studio after he died? It would have made examining these slides easier. Who has a slide projector nowadays anyway?
The slide I examined showed a wood carving of a pregnant woman. She gripped her bulged belly, like the Venus of Willendorf—that Paleolithic carving of a woman with child-bearing hips and milk-filled breasts. My father’s carving resembled a chain sawed railroad tie—the cheapest wood available to the young sculptor. The deep-set eyes and long body reminded me of an Easter Island monolith. A gouged mouth frowned. I recalled my mother described the sculpture as “the little 18 inch woman with a worried look on her face.”
If that’s not a worried look on your face, I don’t know what is. You’re having a baby.
Mom also stated in her account that the title of the sculpture was Woman of Pain. The pain of childbirth? Could this be the sculpture? I found the title Woman in Pain listed as #20 in the file index of a metal box my father taped and marked,
SLIDES OF SCULPTURES VAULT Property Fred Wilson Muddy Wheel EXTRA—DO NOT REMOVE
Despite his warning not to remove the slides, he or someone did, because slide #20 for Woman in Pain was not there. What remained was his note in red on the index that he carved the sculpture in wood. I counted all the sculptures listed in the index as “wood” and reached ten total. Only half were sculptures of women: Indian Lady, Hold on Little Woman, Sister of Holy Family, Fat Lady, and Woman in Pain. I had to track down all five sculptures to find the one my father gave my mother. I recalled seeing several wood carvings around his Albuquerque gallery. Years of sun and rain exposure had bleached the wood gray. I planned to call his third wife, Kristen, to see if she still has them.
More than the provenance of the pregnant woman carving in the slide, what appeared to be red pigment on her lips and between her troll-like legs perplexed me. She looked like a vampire having a miscarriage. I did not know. The wood grain swirled around the woman’s breasts and belly which glinted in the sun. I know from my mother that my father could not afford wood polish for his carvings in the 1960s. Instead, he stained the surface with shoe polish and paint to resemble polished wood. Perhaps my perception was a trick of the light, the slide’s age, and a coat of red paint. The size of my thumb, the slide refused to release its secret.
I put aside the slides and opened another line of attack to discover what sculptures my father exhibited at a show fifty years earlier. My mother stated in her story that their wedding occurred six months after the fashion art show. They married on September 7, 1963. Counting backwards, I flicked my thumb out of my balled fist followed by my index to my pinkie. September, August, July, June, May. I ran out of fingers on my right hand and raised my thumb on my left. April. The event when my parents met occurred in April 1963.
I pulled my father’s 1960’s scrapbook off a closet shelf, placed the binder on the bed, and opened the book to the early pages. Behind a brittle sheet protector, a yellowed newspaper clipping from The California Eagle, the oldest Negro newspaper in the western United States, announced on Thursday, March 28, 1963, “FASHION SHOW.” The clipping smaller than a postcard explained:
High fashion collections of hats in flattering shades by Laura Brooks and Maudrea Milliners and Easter finery from Ruby’s French Shop will highlight the versatile program.
Ordinarily, a newspaper clipping about a fashion show would be out of place in an artist scrapbook if it were not for both parents reporting that they met at a fashion show. My father included this clipping because of its significance to him. I noted that the article used the verb “will” as in “will happen on a future date.” The fashion show had not occurred yet. March 28, 1963 was two weeks before Easter on April 14. As a high fashion model, my mother wore hats in “flattering shades” and “Easter finery from Ruby’s French Shop.” I imagined her dressed in the pastel shades of Easter eggs.
I read further:
Proceeds from the affair will be used for the Bethune Monument in Washington, D.C., and the Los Angeles Music Center.
I reread the words “Bethune Monument in Washington” and Googled them. A Wikipedia article appeared on the screen. A photo showed a bronze sculpture of the Civil Rights leader and educator Mary McLeod Bethune. She stood with a cane in her right hand and extended with her left hand a diploma to two black children. The inscription on the base read “Let her works praise her.” The National Council of Negro Women sponsored the sculpture which they erected at Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C. in 1974.
My father and mother participated in a 1963 fundraiser for that monument?
I did a double take. My father participated in the fundraiser for more than altruistic reasons. He carved wood, molded clay, and chiseled stone, but his hands failed to grasp one material.
I recalled the crunch of snow beneath my shoes as my father and I trudged to a foundry in Taos, New Mexico one Thanksgiving in the 1990s. Snow-covered bronzes of cowboys and Indians decorated the yard, as if Jack Frost had frozen Custer’s Last Stand. The sun glinted off the snow and blinded my vision if I stared too long. I focused on the door of a building ahead. My arms held tight to my swaddled body to preserve warmth. Once we entered the foundry, I heated up. Furnaces melted bronze and cast sculptures. Men busied among the giant plaster molds.
“I would like to make bronzes of my sculptures,” my father squeaked. I winced because I sounded like him. “But it costs a lot of money.”
His fur-lined earflap hat, visor up, completed his resemblance to the Disney character Goofy. He told me figures and I stared. My mother would love to have had thousands of dollars from him to raise his three kids alone. Now he expects me to give him thousands to raise an army of bronzes?
“If I could cast bronzes of my sculptures, I could charge more for them and make copies, so that all I have to do is sell the copies in different sizes and keep the original.”
I shrugged. “Wow, that’s a good idea.”
We left the foundry but his dream followed.
My thoughts returned to my present research in my father’s scrapbook, which laid open on the bed I refocused on the “Fashion Show” article and read the next paragraph:
Great sculptors on occasion heighten their message by deforming their figures. Wilson utilizes this approach in his sculptural portrayal of the idea that the world will eventually become a woman’s world.
The world will eventually become a woman’s world? A paper published my father in 1963 as portraying and prophesying this? Now, I was really curious to discover what sculptures my father exhibited at the fashion show and why. As my mother wrote, “One little sculpture seemed to impress me more than anything else in the entire exhibit.” Who was the Woman in Pain?
The Poets of the Square Table disbanded their fellowship until the following month. My appearance there on August 27, 2012 marked the first time I shared my parents’ poetry in public after their deaths weeks earlier. I did not know then that when I later became a poet, writer, and storyteller and created a spreadsheet listing hundreds of readings and performances, I would list the Poets of the Square Table as my first public event. The poets planted the idea in me of telling my parents’ story through their poetry, but I had overlooked their second idea: telling my parents’ story through Fred’s sculpture. Jessie wrote that Woman of Pain “is a connecting link in our marriage.” If I can find the sculpture, I could find the “connecting link.”
CHAPTER 7
“Is that what I think it is? Is that blood?”
My left eye closed. My right eye squinted at the Kodak slide I held up to the light. Boxed carousels of my father’s slides crowded around me on the bed. I lacked a slide projector. Instead, I examined his slides—thousands of them—one by one in search of Woman of Pain, the sculpture Mom reported Dad gave her when they first met at an art fashion show where she modeled and he exhibited. My mother had concluded her written account of their first meeting by writing:
The little sculpture, Woman of Pain, is still in our art collection. It is not for sale; it is a connecting link in our marriage.
If I can find that sculpture, I can discover why my parents connected. Oh, Andre, why didn’t you grab Dad’s slide projector, too, when you rescued his art slides from his Albuquerque studio after he died? It would have made examining these slides easier. Who has a slide projector nowadays anyway?
The slide I examined showed a wood carving of a pregnant woman. She gripped her bulged belly, like the Venus of Willendorf—that Paleolithic carving of a woman with child-bearing hips and milk-filled breasts. My father’s carving resembled a chain sawed railroad tie—the cheapest wood available to the young sculptor. The deep-set eyes and long body reminded me of an Easter Island monolith. A gouged mouth frowned. I recalled my mother described the sculpture as “the little 18 inch woman with a worried look on her face.”
If that’s not a worried look on your face, I don’t know what is. You’re having a baby.
Mom also stated in her account that the title of the sculpture was Woman of Pain. The pain of childbirth? Could this be the sculpture? I found the title Woman in Pain listed as #20 in the file index of a metal box my father taped and marked,
SLIDES OF SCULPTURES VAULT Property Fred Wilson Muddy Wheel EXTRA—DO NOT REMOVE
Despite his warning not to remove the slides, he or someone did, because slide #20 for Woman in Pain was not there. What remained was his note in red on the index that he carved the sculpture in wood. I counted all the sculptures listed in the index as “wood” and reached ten total. Only half were sculptures of women: Indian Lady, Hold on Little Woman, Sister of Holy Family, Fat Lady, and Woman in Pain. I had to track down all five sculptures to find the one my father gave my mother. I recalled seeing several wood carvings around his Albuquerque gallery. Years of sun and rain exposure had bleached the wood gray. I planned to call his third wife, Kristen, to see if she still has them.
More than the provenance of the pregnant woman carving in the slide, what appeared to be red pigment on her lips and between her troll-like legs perplexed me. She looked like a vampire having a miscarriage. I did not know. The wood grain swirled around the woman’s breasts and belly which glinted in the sun. I know from my mother that my father could not afford wood polish for his carvings in the 1960s. Instead, he stained the surface with shoe polish and paint to resemble polished wood. Perhaps my perception was a trick of the light, the slide’s age, and a coat of red paint. The size of my thumb, the slide refused to release its secret.
I put aside the slides and opened another line of attack to discover what sculptures my father exhibited at a show fifty years earlier. My mother stated in her story that their wedding occurred six months after the fashion art show. They married on September 7, 1963. Counting backwards, I flicked my thumb out of my balled fist followed by my index to my pinkie. September, August, July, June, May. I ran out of fingers on my right hand and raised my thumb on my left. April. The event when my parents met occurred in April 1963.
I pulled my father’s 1960’s scrapbook off a closet shelf, placed the binder on the bed, and opened the book to the early pages. Behind a brittle sheet protector, a yellowed newspaper clipping from The California Eagle, the oldest Negro newspaper in the western United States, announced on Thursday, March 28, 1963, “FASHION SHOW.” The clipping smaller than a postcard explained:
High fashion collections of hats in flattering shades by Laura Brooks and Maudrea Milliners and Easter finery from Ruby’s French Shop will highlight the versatile program.
Ordinarily, a newspaper clipping about a fashion show would be out of place in an artist scrapbook if it were not for both parents reporting that they met at a fashion show. My father included this clipping because of its significance to him. I noted that the article used the verb “will” as in “will happen on a future date.” The fashion show had not occurred yet. March 28, 1963 was two weeks before Easter on April 14. As a high fashion model, my mother wore hats in “flattering shades” and “Easter finery from Ruby’s French Shop.” I imagined her dressed in the pastel shades of Easter eggs.
I read further:
Proceeds from the affair will be used for the Bethune Monument in Washington, D.C., and the Los Angeles Music Center.
I reread the words “Bethune Monument in Washington” and Googled them. A Wikipedia article appeared on the screen. A photo showed a bronze sculpture of the Civil Rights leader and educator Mary McLeod Bethune. She stood with a cane in her right hand and extended with her left hand a diploma to two black children. The inscription on the base read “Let her works praise her.” The National Council of Negro Women sponsored the sculpture which they erected at Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C. in 1974.
My father and mother participated in a 1963 fundraiser for that monument?
I did a double take. My father participated in the fundraiser for more than altruistic reasons. He carved wood, molded clay, and chiseled stone, but his hands failed to grasp one material.
I recalled the crunch of snow beneath my shoes as my father and I trudged to a foundry in Taos, New Mexico one Thanksgiving in the 1990s. Snow-covered bronzes of cowboys and Indians decorated the yard, as if Jack Frost had frozen Custer’s Last Stand. The sun glinted off the snow and blinded my vision if I stared too long. I focused on the door of a building ahead. My arms held tight to my swaddled body to preserve warmth. Once we entered the foundry, I heated up. Furnaces melted bronze and cast sculptures. Men busied among the giant plaster molds.
“I would like to make bronzes of my sculptures,” my father squeaked. I winced because I sounded like him. “But it costs a lot of money.”
His fur-lined earflap hat, visor up, completed his resemblance to the Disney character Goofy. He told me figures and I stared. My mother would love to have had thousands of dollars from him to raise his three kids alone. Now he expects me to give him thousands to raise an army of bronzes?
“If I could cast bronzes of my sculptures, I could charge more for them and make copies, so that all I have to do is sell the copies in different sizes and keep the original.”
I shrugged. “Wow, that’s a good idea.”
We left the foundry but his dream followed.
My thoughts returned to my present research in my father’s scrapbook, which laid open on the bed I refocused on the “Fashion Show” article and read the next paragraph:
Great sculptors on occasion heighten their message by deforming their figures. Wilson utilizes this approach in his sculptural portrayal of the idea that the world will eventually become a woman’s world.
The world will eventually become a woman’s world? A paper published my father in 1963 as portraying and prophesying this? Now, I was really curious to discover what sculptures my father exhibited at the fashion show and why. As my mother wrote, “One little sculpture seemed to impress me more than anything else in the entire exhibit.” Who was the Woman in Pain?
TO BE CONTINUED
 Recognized |
|
My book "Poetry and Poison" will be more like "Pottery and Poison" for several chapters as I explore the sculptures of my father Fred Robert Wilson and their role in his marriage to my mother Jessie Lee Dawson. My conclusions are subject to change based upon what I uncover. The image is of the Mary McLeod Bethune Memorial in Washington, D.C. by Roberts Betts. Through articles, I confirmed that my parents met at a fundraiser for this monument.
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