ARGHHHH!!!
18” x 24”
Acrylic paint on canvas
London, Ontario
2008
Jim Kogelheide
The Story of the Angry Trees...
A
downtown London art gallery called The Arts Project (TAP) was having a
fundraising art-a-thon. Many artists, playwrights
and musicians from London were gathered by 8:30pm on a Friday evening in the
spring of 2008. Announcements were made
and then we all awaited the topic for the event. I thought that this was going to be interesting
and challenging to not know what our subject was to be until that evening.
The whole idea was to announce the subject for the event
and then the artists had the next twelve hours to complete a painting. Artists from the theatre were participating,
as well. There were 5 groups preparing
scripts throughout this night. Each
group had a writer, director and 4 performers.
The next morning the directors and performers met with the writer and
then the rehearsals began until the stage was to come alive that evening. The artists’ paintings were displayed the
next afternoon until the time of the performances. The public had that day to place bids on the
completed art peaces with the money from the sale of the items going to
TAP. It was a totally amazing experience
for me and like life, it had a few ups and downs but the downs got turned
upside down – on my face! Did I tell you
that I had a great time?!!
The
topic was “Angry Trees” and it was presented to us with a short video clip of a
guy pretending to be an angry tree who was about to make a march on city
hall. The laughter was deafening.
Many
people from the community came to watch the painters, talk, dance and laugh
while the music played until about 3am.
I had several wonderful moments when I was able to share my guitar with
a more experienced player and in return I shared a few of my own songs. I have never learned how to play someone
else’s songs. In the last year and half
of my playing I’ve created a few nice ‘ditties’ and three songs. Just within this last month I’ve written four
new songs so my performances this evening were a bit rough, but everyone
complemented my lyrics and told me that my playing was very good. My energy is there – now my skill needs to
catch up!
My
favourite moment of guitar playing was not when I was hooked up to a mic and
amplifier – it was in a quiet room with seven other people. When I began to play only three people were
present and everytime I blinked someone new appeared. I began my “Turtle Song”.
I
hadn’t even finished the first lines before everyone started laughing. I’ve never shared the lyrics without that
response… people love it when I look all serious and then I begin to bellow:
“I
think turtles are great
they’re
big and round just like a plate”
Now
this was a group of artists and they immediately picked up on my one line of
repetition in the lyrics, which is “They live in the water….most of the time”
and every time I came back to that line they all sang it out. The last time we sang that line it was so
loud that many other people came to see what was going on and we all burst out
laughing. Like I said we all had a great
time!
The
evening – for me – began with a little hesitation, though. After the announcement of the topic for the
art works there were minutes of hasty movement throughout the gallery while I
and many others ventured out to the street to cool off a bit. I went to a nearby parking lot and found a
quiet place to sit and let my mind wander.
Luckily, I found myself staring at a huge brick wall – the side of a
store – that had no graffiti so that it became my blank canvas of imagination.
Images
from a scene from Lord of the Rings played in my head as I recalled “The March
of the Ents”… yet how could I capture that much movement? I let my mind relax a bit more but the blank
canvas of a brick wall remained blank.
I
wandered back to where the action was happening and people had begun to
dance! I was soaking in the scene and
trying to realize that I had no need to fear for my failure. An idea would come to my head when the time
was right and the mood fit. For now I
could enjoy the music and all the other people that were enjoying themselves.
After
a few songs I continued to the back of the room where it opened up to
downstairs studio spaces and I stopped short when I saw what I saw. I couldn’t believe it. There were four artists standing in front of
large canvases and the canvases where already half covered in paint. I felt a gulp in my throat. My paintings usually take over two weeks to
complete and I knew that a 12 hour painting session was going to be a
challenge, but suddenly I felt very out of place. I put aside my worried thoughts and instead
went around and complemented the other artists and introduced myself.
I
sat in front of my blank canvas for twenty minutes and the only thing I had
drawn was a box. This was the only idea
to come to me so far. I always paint a
nice texture around the edges of a canvas and my idea was to make the border
texture extend onto the surface of the canvas… basically making my actual
painting space a little smaller. The
idea is not to create a smaller painting but to have some elements of the
painting reaching into our world from inside the image. I thought it would be a fun idea to have my
angry tree reaching out from inside of the painting to try to grab the viewer of
the painting. During this time I became
know as the painter with the box. People
would come into the room I was in with other artists and wander around watching
what we were doing. When someone
approached me I would ask them if they liked my box and they would look at my
blank canvas with only a box drawn on it and say “Yes, that is a lovely box you
have drawn!” At least I was still
laughing.
It
was now almost 10pm and my ideas were not gaining any focus. I walked down the street until I found a
payphone and I called my wife. I can’t
believe that it costs 50 cents to make a local call. Joanne could understand my building
frustration and she calmed me by showing me that it’s okay to feel that way,
“after all” she said, “you have never done anything like this and you knew it
would be a challenge to work with lots of people around you, in such a short
time.” We talked about the silly things
Koly did that evening and then we parted with a laugh. She knew I’d be okay.
I
went back to my canvas and my pencil began to move very slowly. Suddenly an angry tree hand had appeared and
it was wrapping around the side of the canvas.
A few trees appeared in the distance.
The angry tree spoke to me then, as his mouth was simply formed,
“Arghhhh!!!” – with four h’s and three exclamation marks. Then the reason for his anger became clear to
me and I could see all the cut down trees and the factories in the
distance. The pollution from the
factories escaped the painting and drifted away. I stepped back and began to laugh… it looked
like I had drawn a Far Side comic image.
I’ve never painted anything that looked like that before. I guess that the art show needed a sense of
humour with my silly angry tree being surrounded by all the other paintings of
intensity and grace.
One
artist that I got to meet is a pretty happy guy. He works as a cake artist at a renowned
specialty cake shop during the day and works on his own paintings at
night. He showed us some of his cake
artwork… not just decorating but also layering the cake with certain fruits and
creams and other yummy things. It was
now 2:30am and all the artists gathered for cake and coffee. Then things got out of control.
We
all started sharing stories about our ‘Angry Tree’ topic and one artist began
singing a song – sung like the munchkins – from the Wizard of Oz but had
changed all the lyrics to tell a story of an angry tree and all the
shrubbery. I had tears rolling down my
cheeks when that happened. We were all
tired and getting a little delirious.
Lots of people liked the idea of painting an angry tree sitting in the
back seat of a New York cab with his head and arm out the window and the tree
is shaking his arm at the city in anger.
This went on for a while until someone pointed out that many artists
still had a lot of work ahead of them.
The painting continued.
Earlier
that evening I had felt a little out of place with my way of looking at things
and painting ability and style, but by the time I left I knew that the other
artists had learned just as much from me as I did from them.
I thought
it was typical that once I got home – at 10am – and had a chance to relax with
Koly in the backyard that my brain suddenly filled with all sorts of ideas for
really cool paintings I could have done.
My imagination was really going wild now… but like I said – it was a
typical situation. A little while later
I decided that I wanted to write a poem about the experience…
ANGRY TREES
Angry trees are
to the Earth bound.
Angry trees are
weak without a sound.
Angry trees are
disappearing with great
speed.
Angry trees are
in a time of need.
Artists timely congregate
with visions of tones to be
structured.
Brushes deftly instigate
their actions in a moment
captured.
Bringing to life a voice
reflected by light
raising an eye or brow
the trees have friends willing
to fight:
Artists
of the here and now!
Jim Kogelheide
June 28, 2008
Upon
departing many of us shared ideas about finding excuses to do something like
this again. I hope we do. I had a great time! Did I already say that?
Jim Kogelheide
2008
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