a must see: The Dust Bowl by Ken Burns

My family and I will be tuning in this weekend to watch the latest film by renowned director Ken Burns and PBS: The Dust Bowl. As you know, this subject matter is near and dear to me and at the heart of my 2011 stories on canvas: Dust Bowl Glimpses. I'm so very proud of the work because it gives a voice to the impoverished people who endured merciless conditions of a record-breaking 10-year drought in the 1930s. Please join me.

My Dust Bowl Glimpses series:

 

                                Open publication - Free publishing - More 1930s america

taking the mother road -- the first story

NOTE: This post was originally published on August 29, 2011.

"Taking the Mother Road" - limited edition giclée print

Please allow me to share a story for each of the six paintings from my Dust Bowl Glimpses series, my first in some years now. They are dedicated to the impoverished people who, despite hardship, extended a hand to help strangers because it was the humane thing to do.

The first, "Taking the Mother Road", sets the stage for the remaining five:

They didn’t want to leave but they had no choice. Drought, dying livestock, foreclosures, and acres of topsoil blown into their homes and lungs drove them away from the only life they knew. California offered promises of steady work and fertile ground—a fresh start. They were taking the mother road.

"Taking the Mother Road" - 8"x8" acrylic on cradled wood panel

The colors are intentionally-muted. The landscape appropriately desolate. "Taking the Mother Road" attempts to capture the constant migration of families.

One by one, impoverished families of the Dust Bowl (1930s America) crawled onto Route 66, the mother road, in search of a better living out West. While some families stayed put, most could no longer endure the merciless conditions created by what would become a record-breaking 10-year drought, uncultivable land, and devastating winds that blew an estimated 100 million acres of topsoil across the region into homes, schools, and townships. One storm no dust bowler ever forgot was “Black Sunday”, a debilitating dust storm on April 14, 1935, that rolled across Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Texas.

My research on this project involved:

• Reading John Steinbeck's Pulitzer-prize winning novel The Grapes of Wrath
• Listening to my mom share stories of our ancestors who homesteaded on the prairies of Kansas and Colorado during the 1930s
• Viewing PBS' American Experience (love their whole body of work) Surviving the Dust Bowl
  
• Viewing the government-sponsored documentary released in 1936 The Plow that Broke the Plains
• Visiting a variety of online sites
  

For those of you interested in learning more on the subject, I highly recommend watching the aforementioned videos. Interestingly, I chose not to watch the 20th Century Fox movie version of The Grapes of Wrath for fear of being influenced by the images. Not sure why I thought that, but I did. The Oscar-winning movie is now in my Netflix queue.

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Click here to read the stories on the remaining five DUST BOWL GLIMPSES paintings. Galleries have also been added to my Web site: www.weatheredsilo.com.

studio update

The week of August 22nd promises to be a big week for me. That's when I plan to offer all new art for sale in my shop.

For starters, I will unveil my very first series of paintings, Dust Bowl Glimpses, since opening my Weathered Silo studio in January 2010. It's been a rewarding (and excruciatingly slow) journey. I plan to sell my original paintings (acrylic on birch panels) as well as limited-edition giclees (professionally printed locally).



Additionally, I'll be selling a handful of original pencil+ink drawings that incorporate natural colorants such as coffee, tea, and wine. They are part of my Art is My Compass series. Stay tuned for more details.




And last but not least, I will be offering the first of several oil paintings I've completed on pieces on handcrafted canvases made in my studio using salvaged exotic hardwoods + eco-textile remnants from previous studio work (hemp/organic cotton). I can't wait for the reveal -- they are paintings you won't need to frame!

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In the coming days I plan to finalize all the administrative work associated with updating my Etsy shop and other online marketplaces (a task I do NOT favor...especially when it comes to matching screen colors to artwork -- sigh!).

I will also be taking a much-needed family vacation August 7-14th in Eastern Washington with dear, dear friends. Thankfully we can count on sunshine and heat during these trips...something we haven't seen much of at all this year in Seattle. ;-)

Thank you to everyone who has given me support and advice along the way. I am grateful to have you in my life!

dorothea lange

Dorothea Lange. Circa 1936 - image source

My recent look at the Great Depression, specifically the rural poor affected by the Dust Bowl, led me to Dorothea Lange's extraordinary collection of photographs. Ms. Lange worked for Roy Stryker's team of photographers and the Farm Security Administration (FSA) from 1935-1939 documenting the lives of displaced farmers, sharecroppers and migrant workers. Here are just a few of her photographs that have moved me:

Migrant Mother (age 32). Circa 1936 - image source

Penniless family. Circa 1936 - image source

Fairbanks family tent home. Circa 1939 - image source

Nettie Circa 1938 - image source

On a related note, I'm anxious to dive into "Heartland New Mexico, Photographs from the Farm Security Administration 1935-1943" by Nancy Wood that features Ms. Lange's photographs of Mills, Bosque Farms, and other resettlement areas in New Mexico. My paternal grandfather was a coal miner in nearby Raton, NM, and Ms. Wood's book revisits places depicted in the Ms. Lange's photographs.