GET YOUR KICKS ON ROUTE 66

Australian artist - not my problem

I bash my home state of Oklahoma consistently and here’s one reason:

According to the 2017 Spending Per Pupil Charts, Oklahoma spends an average $7672 for each student in public school - 4th from the bottom among the 50 U.S. states. Meanwhile, it LEADS - yes, #1 in the Nation - for cuts per pupil  in the 2017 budget.

Spending Per Pupil in New York State: average $22,552 per pupil.

Average Teacher Salaries (Okla.) = $44,343.

Average Teach Salaries (NY State) = $66,760.

Does money equal student success? I’m not sure but if a classroom has more supplies, more text books - if a school takes kids on more field trips, offers things like Science Club, art and music besides sports, then….yes, it matters.

Our property taxes are outrageously high in New York. But we are reaping the reward in this country of a poorly educated public - people who actually thought the Constitution of the U.S. was “false news” put out by anti-government leftists. 

The earth is not flat nor was it created 3000 years ago in seven days. Religion is a personal decision; don’t force me or my kids to believe your way or embarrass school children whose ethnic/cultural backgrounds don’t correspond to the main stream.

Spend money on kids! Our country can’t afford the alternative!

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A few miles off famous Route 66 in the tiny town of Foyil, Oklahoma, is the house that Ed Galloway built.  You can’t miss Ed’s place; you’ll see the 90 ft. tall painted totem pole in the side yard.

Ed was born in Missouri and served in the military in the early 1900s. He was stationed in the Philippine Islands and learned carving and saw oriental art for the first time. He decided, after returning to civilian life, that he would carve violins - one per tree specimen.  He got up to 300.  And he taught art.

Charles Page (now THERE’S a story! a man who became a zillionaire in Tulsa, bought up hundreds of acres outside the city and built Sand Springs - where I was born - as a “planned community” especially to benefit widows and orphans.  Look him up on Wikipedia.) hired Ed to come and teach art at his orphanage. So Ed moved to Oklahoma in 1937 and launched his life’s work - a total Disneyesque montage made of wire and concrete and bright paint.

“All my life I did the best I knew.  

I built these things by the side of the road to be a friend to you.”

Ed died in1962.  The place fell into disrepair. Vandals stole all the violins. In 1990, the Roger County Historic Society and the Kansas Grass Roots Art Association took over to stabilize and restore what was left and now, when you drive down Rt. 66, right after passing the Big Blue Whale in Catoosa (concrete, built by Hugh Davis for his wife), you’ll come to Foyil. Stop and visit the Ed Galloway Totem Pole Park.

Ed's "Fiddle House"

TWO SHORT STORIES

Maud's House

Dog Painting:Winter

IT’S A HARD KNOCK LIFE

Go see the movie “Maudie” when you get a chance.  It’s a biopic about Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis and stars Ethan Hawks and Sally Hawkins. 

Maud (Dowley) Lewis is the Canadian version of Grandma Moses. Born in 1903, she was physically deformed, a result of childhood illness, and lived with her parents near Digby, Novia Scotia, until they both died in the early 1930s. With no other prospects, she answered an ad for a housekeeper, moved to Marshall and married the cruel, miserly fish peddler, Everett Lewis, whose 10 ft. X 12 ft. house she was meant to keep.  

The house had no electricity nor running water and she was no housekeeper.  She could, however, paint and began painting flowers and animals - greeting cards and tiny pictures - that her husband sold door-to-door along with his fish. She also painted every available surface in and on the house itself. (The house in its entirety sits inside the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax.) 

Time passes….recognition comes….she still sells her little paintings for not a lot of money…The Nixon White House even buys one! (She requested payment in advance; did she know something?) Maud died in 1970. Her widowed husband continued to sell her paintings, forging her name when “absolutely necessary.”  (Life in Nova Scotia was probably hard for a fish peddler. Should we condemn him?)

One of Maud’s little paintings sold at auction in 2016 for $20,000. I’m betting her prices will go up after the movie comes out. In fact, there’s renewed interest among museums, collectors and investors in “older female artists” according to a piece recently on Hyperallergic.  Explanation: younger artists are not making the cut and established artists’ prices are insanely high with the world chasing after those that show up at auction. By default, women are coming into their own.

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IT’S ALIVE!

I admit I can’t escape my craft-based roots.  I want public art to “do something.”  I want beautifully designed streetscape furniture, clever signage, public art that lifts the spirits through sound, shape, texture and/or color.  I want socially conscious design!

Not too much to ask, do you think?

So here’s the latest idea that I just stumbled across:  is it public art or is it living sculpture? Or both?  It’s call “CityTree,” a 13 ft. wall of living moss, created and built by Green City Solutions, a Berlin based design firm.

Because of the specific moss culture, it “eats” particulate matter (PM), nitrogen oxide and ozone, offsetting 240 tons of CO2 equivalent per year. Or to measure differently, it does the work of 275 urban planted trees.

So far, about 20 of these CityTrees are installed - Oslo, Paris, Hong Kong, Brussels and Glasgow - at a cost of about $25,000 each. 

Yes, they require some tender care - primarily water - but so do planted trees. And they have some shortcomings. They don’t supply shade. They don’t offset through scale some urban masses. And they may not survive extreme temperatures - hot or cold. But for areas where planting trees is not an option - and for the sheer softness moss covered anything can infuse! - this looks pretty cool. 

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HAVE A SAFE JULY 4TH EVERYBODY! I’m going on picnic #3 - #4 tomorrow. That diet we started 10 days ago? On “hold” for awhile.