Plum Blossom Special

This Plum Blossom painting is a result of a great family vacation in Alpine. The need to pay the piper and desire to make something as cheerful as I felt inside. This is the first time I feel I have lived up to my mentor's George Wentz's teaching--- use of European (French) color and brush stroke. It is alive like George's paintings. It sold.

Soapbox Derby winner has uphill battle

On the obstacle course of life, it's the hurdles that get you where you need to go. Swerve around them, and you miss a flight into the finer things life has to offer. In the case of the Southeast Texas Soapbox Derby race, staying the course on the straight and narrow is the way to win. And that's how Axle, a little boy with heart, placed third with more obstacles than his mother thought were possible to zig zag. But she — I, was proven wrong.


Two years of tinkering with washers, wheels, axles (the car parts), bearings and weights had brought them closer as a father and son team. This year, they planned to think more on the science of the weight of the car versus the slope of the hill and the wind and things this mom doesn't "get." But an emergency trip to take care of 'Grandma in Ohio' took dad, Jeff, out of the race. Axle kept his chin up but I know what he was thinking, no dad, no race, and poor Grandma in Ohio with her breathing tube.


Time to opt out of the race. This mom's understanding of things mechanical will certainly be a hindrance to the boy. "No," said his sponsor "It's an experience he will remember the rest of his life." True enough. And sponsor Tom Flanagan and his family offer to mentor and support him. We're back in the race. With Jeff in Ohio, I am now a single, working mom with a derby car to maneuver.


Does the steering work? Turn it left, turn it right. Yep, seems to work. Do the brakes work? Step on 'em. Yep, seem to work. Now to the polishing and lettering. Lots of polishing. Look isn't mom good at this, isn't that car shiny, I say to myself. Weighing in, we collect our car number — thirteen.


"Look Axle, lucky thirteen! Thirteen is so lucky, buildings in Las Vegas won't allow floors to be numbered thirteen."


Off to the practice run. Crash! Right into the rail of the Maurey Myers Bridge! Vertigo sets in at the thought of Friday night traffic on the Interstate below. It seems the steering pulley had come loose. Back to the drawing board. Thank God for kind people and Soapbox Derby mentors and wire and pliers and sleep. Ours is the first race in the morning.


Saturday is a day of nose to nose heats. We make it to the finals. Time to hit the sack and see what Sunday brings. At the bottom of the hill, where the weekend culminates in eliminations and advances, emotions are like wheels braking on gravel. My stomach is in knots. Spinning down the hill, Axle crosses the finish line last. His head remains down until the weigh out. His back in a hump rises and falls after a long, deep breath and he comes up smiling, skipping off to the loser's bracket. And that's really what makes him a winner, but third place ain't bad. Oh-doo-dah-day.

Persia, acrylic on paper, 24"x32", $300

I went to high school with a few students from Persia, or as it had been renamed in 1979, Iran. This was about the time the Shah of Iran was exiled. The politics of fundamentalist Islam was so far removed from the beautiful culture and art I had studied. The students I met were soft-spoken but fiercely protective of their home and culture. The girls were breaking tradition, with their parent's blessing, just to be educated, let alone travel to the US. I saw in them the deep texture and saturated color of the paintings and history of their ancient and rich culture.

Ode to Bob, acrylic on cardboard, 24"x14", $350

After spending time with artist Robert Rauschenburg, before his death in 2008, I began to see differently. A blurred photograph, seemingly random juxtapositions of objects and images---I began to read meaning into images in news ways and to appreciate simple composition of color and line. This is an ode to Rauschenburg or, as he liked to call himself, Bob.

Buchanan's Anniversary, collage, acrylic on canvas, 6" x 8," $200

James Buchanan was the only President who never married but not the first to leave a mess in the office for others to clean up. His breeding and manners eclipsed common sense and intuition leaving him, well, impotent in the ways of a leader. Thanks to the good Abe Lincoln, we still have a country united under God - mostly.

Buchanan presided over a rapidly dividing nation whose political realities he could not grasp. The Democrats split,the Whigs were destroyed, giving rise to the Republicans.

Thinking the people would accept constitutional law as the Supreme Court interpreted it, he was dismayed when Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivered the Dred Scott decision, asserting that Congress had no constitutional power to deprive persons of their property rights in slaves in the territories.

Sectional strife rose to such a pitch in 1860 that the Democratic Party split into northern and southern wings, each nominating its own candidate for the presidency. Consequently, when the Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, it was a foregone conclusion that he would be elected even though his name appeared on no southern ballot. Rather than accept a Republican administration, the southern "fire-eaters" advocated secession.

Buchanan, reverted to a policy of inactivity,leaving his successor, the good Abe, to resolve the frightful issue facing the Nation.

Buchanan's Anniversary, collage by Donna Rae Wisor, 6" x 8"

A crumbling portrait in pen and ink of Buchannan's neice and her newlywed husband came my way last month. The neice is identified by a family member from Beaumont, Texas, a decendant of the late president. I quickly reassembled it on this canvas. Quickly because it might have turned to dust before my eyes. The small canvas is 'framed' in a rubber strip, tacked down by brass upholstery tacs.

Rauschenberg: Patchwork of dreams shapes his life and art

As published in the Beaumont Enterprise, May, 13, 2008

LAFAYETTE, La. - Robert Rauschenberg, a 15-year-old kid growing up in Port Arthur in 1940, wanted to be a minister.

Today, at 79, he's known as the Pope of Pop. Some say the day he won the Venice Biennale painting prize in 1964 was the day the earth stood still. At 39, he had become an icon within the church of art, and elsewhere.

He never became a minister. Nor did he become a pharmacist, another of his youthful dreams.

Instead, he merely shifted the course of art.

In the last three years, Rauschenberg produced 14 large-scale collages entitled "Scenarios and Short Stories," mounted last month at the new Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum in Lafayette. His "Scenarios and Short Stories" will be on display through Sept. 3, along with work by Rauschenberg's photographer son, Christopher, and his longtime friend and collaborator Darryl Pottorf. Rauschenberg attended the opening, which kicked off Rauschenberg Festival Week in Lafayette. The show is dedicated to his mother, whom he watched expertly piecing together fabric in Depression-era Port Arthur, one of the influences in his collage- and collaboration-based style.

And last week, the New York Post reported that the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is close to purchasing Rauschenberg's 1955 masterpiece, "Rebus," for about $30 million from French billionaire Francois Pinault.

And when Time magazine needed an artist's rendering of American emotion on the first anniversary of Sept. 11, it turned to Rauschenberg. "Only Rauschenberg could sum up the vast amount of information we have received since that day in one piece of artwork," said Dr. Lynne Lokensgard, professor of art history at Lamar University.

How did a shy, religious young boy from Depression-era Port Arthur, from a time and place where the talent to draw or dance were not especially valued, become a driving force in the world of art and ideas of the 21st century?

Rauschenberg would say it was the resistance he faced when he had a new idea. And, face it, his idea that art could be made from anything and could be interpreted wildly was radical.

"Rauschenberg is a relentless and courageous innovator. He didn't play it safe. Many of us, when we find success in a niche, we cling to that success as a lifeboat. People like him don't look at the world as limiting, they look toward the future. His approach influenced everybody in my generation," said Keith Carter, a celebrated photographer at Lamar.

Port Arthur days

Being one of the art world's icons is a long way from gritty Port Arthur.

"We didn't have any museums when Milton was here. That's what we called him then," said Dovie (Horton) Logsdon, a classmate from Thomas Jefferson High School in Port Arthur. "But we all had to make the best of what we had. Everyone here was either farming or working with the railroad. We had to create our own culture."

Art was foreign to Rauschenberg when he was growing up in the working-class town.

"The first art I saw that was hung on the wall as art was in California during the Navy," said Rauschenberg.

What he saw at the Los Angeles County Museum was Gainsborough's "Blue Boy" and Lawrence's "Pinkie."

"They looked like the backs of playing cards I had seen. I remember being surprised that a human being actually made them. I thought, well, that's what I do. I doodle and draw and copy the funnies," Rauschenberg said.

Believing education was the key to a better life, his father and mother - a lineman for Gulf States Utilities and a telephone operator/seamstress - sent him to Austin to study pharmacy at the University of Texas. He was expelled within a semester because he had trouble reading. He now knows he is dyslexic.

World War II was raging. A letter from the draft board saved him from coming home in shame. His first job in the Navy was to bathe and wrap corpses, and he was trained as a neuropsychiatric technician.

"No, I was not forced to fight. What I saw was much worse," Rauschenberg said. "I got to see, every day, what war did to the young men who barely survived it. I was in the repair business."

After the war, he hitchhiked back to Port Arthur. To his surprise, his family had moved away, leaving no address.

"Someone told me they thought they might have moved to Lafayette," he said.

He hitched another 120 miles to a coffee shop there. There sat his father, Ernest, who explained simply, over a cup of coffee: He'd been promoted to Lafayette.

The Transformation

Not long after a friend urged him to look into the Kansas City Art Institute, he decided to apply. In a bus terminal on his way to art school, he literally was transformed: Milton Ernest Rauschenberg changed his name to Bob Rauschenberg.

"When people got to know me better and just assumed that I had some dignity, it became Robert then," he said. "So now I'm known as either Robert or Bob."

Reinventing himself and his surroundings has been a hallmark of his career.

In 1948, he went to Paris, attending the famous Academie Julian on the G.I. Bill at 22. But after a year, he discovered the Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he gained confidence and a personal style. He adored collaboration. It made him tick.

He was taught by art world giants Willem De Kooning, Franz Kline and Josef Albers and began life-long collaborations with fellow students, dancer Merce Cunningham and musician John Cage. He collaborated with artists of every medium; theater, dance, and even engineering. He created set designs, lighting costumes, while creating art, too.

In 1953, he moved to New York City where he met aspiring artist Jasper Johns. Together, Rauschenberg and Johns designed window displays for Tiffany's to make ends meet and explored the New York art scene. Their work in the 1950's would become the link between abstract expressionism, which dominated the art world in the '50s, and pop art of the 1960s and influences artists today.

In Manhattan, he farmed the streets for old bicycle wheels, rusted metal signs, exhaust pipes, rocks, rope and an endless array of discarded items into his studio. He transformed them into what he called "combines," a mixture of sculpture and paint. His first, entitled "Monogram," in 1955, stirred controversy. A stuffed goat wrapped in a used tire did not endear him to the hardcore New York arts community of the time.

No matter.

He thrived on criticism.

Rauschenberg was a pioneer in many ways. He opened art to entry by engineers, socialites, politicians, dancers, scientists, and even art groupies. He traveled the world with a desire to collaborate with other artists. He met with world leaders - Fidel Castro, among them - in places thought to have unstable government or unfriendly notions about Americans.

Thriving legacy

Fame and fortune came quickly for Rauschenberg, but began to take their toll in 1970.

"At the time, in New York, everyone around me was divorcing or seemed angry," he recalls. "I went to an astrologer and asked if I was the cause of it. I was told that I wasn't, and to move near the sun. I grew up on the coast and liked the ocean, so I went to Florida."

On Captiva Island, he built a home, a state-of-the-art studio and a lift for his aging mother, Dora, who died in 1999. His father died in 1963 of a heart attack on the job, but lived longenough to see his son's career start to rise.

"Our fathers worked together at Gulf States Utilities," said local sculptor David Cargill. "I remember his dad, Ernest, came to see my family in 1962, when my dad died. He was very proud to see an article about him in Time."

In 2001, Rauschenberg awoke in the middle of the night, tripped on a rug and broke his hip. He responded well to therapy after a hip replacement, but a year later suffered a stroke that immobilized the right side of his body.

Rauschenberg still is farming discarded items. Like the junk from the streets of New York, Rauschenberg now assembles images of things visually discarded in everyday life: a telephone pole, fire hydrant, a used tire, a rusted tricycle, a chair.

"He sends friends and assistants out into the world to take pictures for him, using any kind of digital camera. He'll tell them to make sure they're not very good pictures either," said Janine Boardman, his nurse and assistant.

"The images mean something to him, but he will never tell you that," said Mary Lynn Kotz, author of "Rauschenberg/Art and Life."

Last month, Rauschenberg was wheeled onto the stage at the University of Louisiana Theatre in Lafayette to kick off the latest exhibit of his work.

"A reporter asked me once, 'what is your greatest fear?' and I said it would be to run out of world," he told the crowd of reporters and VIPs. "When I die, I don't want to go anywhere, I just want to work in my studio."

Longtime Rauschenberg collaborator and friend Trisha Brown was at his side on stage and throughout the week. Brown is a widely acclaimed choreographer who pushed dance's limits and helped change modern dance forever.

"Bob is 'the' most living artist," she said. "Collaborating requires a sensibility of connecting to another artist. Upon arrival at the San Carlo Opera House in Naples, I realized our sets and costumes for 'Carmen' were lost. With only two days to opening night, I called Bob. He was taken to a junkyard in Naples where he dragged in these huge, twisted, rusted metal pieces.

"He painted and drilled day and night, no one in the opera house bothered him. They knew something magic was happening. He bought soccer flags at the airport and used them as backdrops. We wore plain black leotards that Bob cut and fringed. He was still on a ladder when the curtain opened. The audience was restless and started rumbling, then yelling. They'd never seen anything like it. It was pure perfection," Brown said.

Still coming home

The Port Arthur native who thought he'd be a preacher or a pharmacist no longer has family in Port Arthur, but he's returned several times for openings and honors bestowed on him by Port Arthur and the State of Texas.

The Museum of the Gulf Coast in Port Arthur maintains a gallery featuring a number of pieces of original artwork, posters, and pieces loaned by the artist. The museum also has a copy of the Talking Heads' "Speaking in Tongues" album cover, which Rauschenberg designed and won him the Grammy for best album packaging in 1983. In August, a Smithsonian show of Rauschenberg's work will visit the Museum of the Gulf Coast.

Souls Brothers: Aykroyd, Belushi, Alexander

Dan Aykroyd partners with Beaumont artist in 'spirit-filled' business venture

By Donna Rae Wisor
As published in The Examiner April 10-16, page 6-7B


Dan Aykroyd is putting spirits in bottles again. Only this time it is not ectoplasm and he is not playing a “Ghostbusters” character in partnership with Bill Murray. He is in a real-life business partnership with artist and Beaumont native John Alexander.

When the artist sketched an idea on a napkin during a long lunch in New York with Aykroyd, he had no idea it would lead him into the spirit world. But he is not just any artist and he was not having lunch with just any friend. He and Aykroyd go back more than 30 years. The world-reknown American landscape and portrait artist was in an exchange of ideas with Aykroyd, legendary actor/musician, entrepreneur and “proud wearer of the spiritualist badge.”

In a brief telephone interview last Friday, Aykroyd’s familiar voice bounced back from cell towers across the Northern Americas.

“I am happy to be calling you from my home in the beautiful St. Lawrence region of Ottawa, in the great state of Ontario, Canada where spring time is here and the hay is ready to harvest,” he said, sounding like maybe he had a cigar in his mouth and his feet propped up on the old milk truck that sits in a barn on his ancestral estate.

Aykroyd confirmed that Alexander had indeed ventured into the spirit world with him.

“John Alexander? Who’s that?” he said.

“The American art…,” was the incomplete reply from this end.

Aykroyd graciously interrupted.

“Aaahh, ha ha ha. Just kidding. He’s my best friend,” he said, sounding a little like the glib-tongued, Bag-O-Glass hawker he played on “Saturday Night Live.”

Recently, this seemingly unlikely pair put they’re heads together and launched Crystal Head Vodka---a kind of spirit more worldly than the myth of the 13 Crystal Heads conjured from the ancient past and brought to the fore in marketing the brand. This “very pure spirit,” according to Aykroyd, is produced in Newfoundland, filtered through Herkimer Diamonds and bottled in an “accurate glass rendering of a human skull,” --- a bottle designed by Alexander during that fateful nosh in New York seven years ago.

“He has been putting skulls in his artwork for years,” said Aykroyd.

But this is Alexander’s first go at a business.

Aykroyd, on the other hand, has been bottling “snob-free grapes” since 2005, bearing the label Dan Aykroyd Wines, with Toronto-based partner Diamond Estates Wines & Spirits LTD. He also holds the rights to Patron Spirits which he is currently distributing throughout Canada.

“This is absolutely my only one [business venture] ever, I’m not business oriented. I just came up with a very cool idea for a bottle. I still can’t believe its happening,” said Alexander from his studio in New York.

Alexander became enamored with skulls after visiting the late artist Diego Rivera’s studio and several Day of the Dead festivals in Oaxaca, Mexico.

“I had an idea to make one of those skulls like you see in Mexico and put tequila in it. I had no interest in the liquor business one way or the other,” he said.

Years later, Aykroyd was telling him about the tequila business and how it was keeping him busy.

“I told him I had an idea about a tequila bottle and Danny said ‘Draw it out on a napkin and let me see.’”

He loved the idea and asked Alexander “flat out” if he would be interested in doing this together.

“He seemed so serious about it. I actually went home and did it, front, side, all different angles. A week or so later, I showed it to him and within two weeks, we were in Canada talking to these liquor people. It’s absolutely astounding how this thing is taking off,” he said.

“Bruni Glass in Italy created a prototype that looked exactly like what John designed,” said Aykroyd.

Aykroyd decided to put Vodka rather than tequila in it.

“ So we got the distillery, he did. We got the distributors. The rest has taken off like a house afire,” said Alexander in an accessible, lingering, Southeast Texas accent.

The two have signed bottles in Houston and New Orleans at Crystal Head Vodka launches.

“I attended those launches because people might be acquainted with me there. Otherwise I’m not too involved. But he’s the draw. The draw is the bottle itself. The other thing that makes it work and changes it from being a novelty is the fact that the vodka is so incredibly good,” he said.

The two are working on another product, mildly-spiced rum.

“That will be more problematic. We’ll have to come up with something other than a skull,” he said.

Meanwhile Alexander is working on a show of his own. He will exhibit his latest master works in New Orleans on May 2 at the Arthur Roger Gallery on 423 Julia Street.

“I owe everything to Jerry Newman, my great mentor. He was the guy who laid the foundation for my career,” he said of the late Beaumont artist and Lamar professor.


13 CRYSTAL SKULLS
If two heads are better than one, then, in this case, 13 heads are better than two. According to the myth of the 13 Crystal Skulls, when brought together, they contain vast knowledge and enlightenment capable of unlocking our most enigmatic ancient mysteries. Alone, each is believed to house radiant psychic energy, which has magical powers and healing properties, according Aykroyd’s video on the Web site at crystalheadvodka.com

Let’s hope so. But after popping the cork on this novel bottle, the 40-percent alcohol-per-volume spirit, though tasty with a glycerin after-texture, left this writer incapable of unlocking the back door, much less our most enigmatic ancient mysteries. And it is seriously recommended that if the reader brings 13 of these Crystal Head Vodka bottles together in one place, to have at least 46 friends there to level the drinking field.

Crystal Head Vodka is currently available in Texas, Canada, California, Nevada, Louisiana and Florida. It will gradually roll out into other markets in the U.S.

LIKE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS
Alexander does not claim any particular interest one way or another in the paranormal or spiritualism but says he is intrigued by the 13 Crystal Skulls myth. On the other hand, Aykroyd is a subscribing benefactor to the American Society for Psychical Research and the Mutual U.F.O. Network.

“I create my own world of UFOs in my art. Danny is an expert at it. He follows that stuff. I don’t.,” he said.

“I’ve been talking about this stuff for years,” said Aykroyd.

He has, in fact, hosted a show on the SciFi channel called “Out There,” revealing that he is a believer in the existence and government cover-up of alien life-forms. About the documentary “Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs” (2005), directed by David Sereda, he said on CNN, “They’re here. They’re looking at us in a petri dish and I’ve got to say, the way mankind is behaving, they are probably very disappointed.”

Aykroyd shares one of his psychic experiences.

“The day before my grandfather died, he came to me in a dream and waved goodbye. He was walking along and waved goodbye to me. That was vivid,” he said.

In what seemed like an unusual moment of vulnerability for Aykroyd, he said, “I am very pleased and almost, like sort of vindicated in a way. There are now assertions that everyone is a little bit psychic. There is now a group in every county in the U.S. researching paranormal activities, studying electronic voice phenomena, ghosts and psychics. Civilians are taking it upon themselves to explore this in an empirical way. Like real ghost busters.”

STRANGE TIES
“For some strange reason I have long friendships with people from ‘Saturday Night Live,’” said Alexander in another telephone interview with the Examiner last Wednesday, from his studio in Amagansett.

The reason is not as strange as the evolution of some of those friendships. Having both been married at different times to “Saturday Night Live” writer Rosie Shuster is one reason Aykroyd and Alexander know each other. Another might be that they have a lot in common.

Alexander said Aykroyd is a pretty gifted artist himself.

“I’ve got a couple of drawings of his. He is an extraordinarily brilliant man. A stunning mind on many levels and art is one of them,” he said.

Both are civic-minded and serve their communities in tangible ways. Alexander is a volunteer firefighter in Amagansett where he resides when he’s not in New York.

“I’ve been a volunteer fireman for 19 years. Dan, on the other hand, I think his love for involvement in police stuff goes back to his childhood. I’ve been down in Louisiana with his police buddies. His involvement with those guys is real. Everytime we go to New Orleans he goes to firehouses and police departments. After Katrina, he was very involved down there. It is very heartfelt and genuine,” he said.

Aykroyd admits he can hardly go anywhere without a policeman’s badge. But that is due to a slight case of Asperger's syndrome, according to his interview with National Public Radio’s Terry Gross. He vigorously and rather sternly recited a large number of facts regarding his appointment by the late Chief J. J. Doyle as a reserve officer with the City of Harahan Police Department in the “great State of Louisiana.”

“Harahan is a no-tolerance-city. Profiling seems to work. I work with them on programs for kids and safety. They do an excellent job down there,” he said.

Aykroyd confirmed that he could legally arrest us but only if we are in the “Great State of Louisiana.” Still, he was assured we at The Examiner would keep our noses clean while he is here in Beaumont with Jim Belushi and the Sacred Heart Band for the Christus gala on Saturday, April 18, where they will performing as The Blues Brothers.

HEY BROTHA!
Aykroyd’s interest in spirits and brand promotion originated with his co-founding of House of Blues Entertainment Inc. now a division of the world’s largest concert company, Live Nation Inc. Yet he still goes on the road as Elwood Blues with Jim Belushi as Zee, or Zurashayda. Together with The Sacred Heart Band, they are The Blues Brothers. Aykroyd’s original partner in The Blues Brothers was Jim Belushi’s real-life brother John Belushi (Jake Blues), who died of a drug overdose in 1982. Together, they founded the Blues Brothers in 1978 during an SNL sketch. They produced a grammy-nominated, triple-platinum selling “Briefcase Full of Blues” record album. In 1997, 15 years after John Belushi’s death, Aykroyd asked Jim Belushi to join the band as Jake’s brother Zee.

It may seem an anomaly that two blue-eyed soul brothers can create triple-platinum selling blues live on stage for more than 30 years. Some say the real blues comes from a life of love lost.

“The loss of my partner when he was 33 and I was 28, that was the loss of a loved one. I think of him when we sing ‘She Caught the Katy,’ you know the one that opened the first movie. I’m really singing the blues then,” said Aykroyd.

Jim Belushi, in an interview with The Examiner last Friday, said there is nothing sad about the blues.

“The blues is the next progression from gospel. There is a great spiritual sense to the music,” said Belushi from his home in Los Angeles where looking out the window he could see the wisteria and the climbing roses.

That’s one reason Belushi performs a back flip at every Blues Brothers performance.

“I always say they pay me to fly because the show is free,” said Belushi. “I’m as strong as a bull. I box, do some yoga, tennis, basketball.

But Aykroyd, like the stereo-typed ‘white man,’ can’t jump.

“I can’t really play basketball. I’m terrible at foot ball. I like watching,” said Aykroyd.

But both of them can sing the blues and they love it.

“I do not have to think about a thing. Not business or…I just get out there and play and sing,” said Aykroyd.

After twelve years together, Belushi said the dance has gotten better.

“I’ll be dancing with ya’ in Beaumont my friend,” he said.

And Aykroyd replied, Hey brotha’.”

Then Belushi’s persona Zee Blues suddenly hit the cell towers.

“We’re reviving a new song for the Beaumont show,” he said.

Then he began to sing, “I started drinking and got real tight, I blew each and all my friends, I felt so good I had to blow it again, I said hey bartender, Hey man, looka here, A draw one, draw two, draw three…

“Look forward to it BROTHA!”