Labor Day 2015 through the vision of Edmund Marion Ashe and Molly Wheeler Wood Pitz

Edmund Marion Ashe (!867-1941) Work n.d. Oil on Canvas. Photo by Wayne Stratz

This guy caught my eye as I entered Iron and Coal; Petroleum and Steel at the Michener Museum in Doylestown.

For my ancestors in the Lehigh Valley it was Fabric and Cement; Slate and Steel. I grew up as Bethlehem steel descended, slate quarries were illegal swimming holes, grandmothers who quilted worked days in sewing mills, and grandfathers made Mack trucks or told stories of deaths in cement hoppers.  Unions were the friends of generations of workers who remembered conditions. Labor meant something.

My dad worked with the tools of a draftsman, but did not escape the industry that sprang from what the ground contained. He drew on paper of what would become blueprints, which in the field became the places where concrete blocks were formed.

Now Bethlehem Steel is a casino. Drafting tools have been replaced by Autocad. Scrubbers keep the cement dust off of cars. The students at my school travel north to see the Mack Truck museum.

and my dad's drafting tools are used to draw art in my studio.

Molly Wheeler Wood Pitz (1913-?) Lime Kiln at Night, 1936 oil on Canvas. Photo by Wayne Stratz

TBT: painting a two studio row porch 2005 ... and again today

2005: the first time Stratoz painted the porch

I dove into the project in 2005, using tape to scetion off areas, maybe it took ten years and a rotting board to forget the project to the point of doing it again. But I have enjoyed the color.

And I guess I am grateful we didn't buy a house with a huge wraparound porch. Our two studio row is all about moderation. Small yards, small porches, small studios... it fits us nicely... most of the time.

When we bought the house in 2004 it was to have more space. Space to create art; and from the beginning it was a two studio row. Eleven years have passed and art indeed has emerged; as well as pizza, strudel, jazz, blog posts, and glass.

So with a promise to Margaret to fix the porch, time off from teaching, and a favorable forecast; I began the project today. Feeling ten years older is not the only change. The yellow has more ochre, the dark green jumps toward the blue side of the sprctrum, and the design... simpler much simpler. And the sunflowers, well they weren't there in 2005. The rose bush has died, and today I am glad to not be painting by thorns.

August 2015: Stratoz painting the porch.

Josef Albers: Study for the Homage to the Square NC State Museum of Art

 

 

View of The Port of Philadelphia by James Hamilton, 1869

as seen at Philadelphia Museum of Art
photo by Wayne Stratz

Drying Sails, Gloucester by Fern Isabel Coppedge

as seen at the Philadelphia Museum of Art ~ 

Wordless Wednesday ~ The Doubter by Yves Tanguy, 1937

The Doubter by Yves Tanguy, 1937
photo by Wayne Stratz

Wordless Wednesday: Three from the Memorial Art Museum in Rochester, NY

Vasily Kandinsky Pink (Rose) 1928

Vasily Kandinsky Pink (Rose) 1928
Philadelphia Museum of Art
photo by Wayne Stratz

another wordless Annunciation

The Annunciation, 1650,  Francisco de Zorbaran Philadelphia Museum of Art

Good Friday at the museum

I had a thought the other day while in Philly... I wonder what St Ignatius would have said about blogging through the spiritual exercises... not exactly silent.. is it?

I had other thoughts while at the Philadelphia museum of art, some prompted by women born in 1907.

Frida Kahlo's exhibit (till May 18, 2008) took us into her life in photographs and many self-portraits. She was not one to keep her emotions out of her work so we see the trauma experienced by a husband having an affair with her sister, a bus accident that crushed her leg and pelvis, two divorces from the same man, and a high protein diet prescribed by her doctor. Hard to look at because of their graphic nature, they showed a woman in pain. Made me curious what Jesus would have painted if he had taken some of his harder moments to canvas. What would I have painted? What would we see at your future exhibit?

20 years ago a friend looked at a doodle I had drawn and entitled it ... "a nice design ruined by a day at work." We taught at the same school.

Lee Miller had a nasty dose of childhood trauma, emerged as a model, made it onto the cover of Vogue, then said... "I want to be on the other side of the camera." And thus followed her dream and became a photographer. Who has benefited from your decision to ... ? Her exhibit will last till April 27, 2008 and featured 140 of her photographs.

After a snack, Mosaic Woman and I went our separate ways and soon enough I was sitting in front of Rogier vander Weyden's The Crucifixion with the Mourning Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist...




Which so matched what I prayed to that morning, John 19: 25-42, that I stayed on that stool and had me some more thoughts ... I think Ignatius would be OK with that.