Front to back: Untitled (Line Drier) 2009,  Untitled (Fid) 2009

From: Donald G. Longcrier
Eleanor Kirkpatrick Gallery at City Arts Center
November 19 through December 23, 2009.

I work with materials that are familiar to me; rope, wood, beeswax, carpenter's tools, and fishing tackle. Individual pieces are often quiet. Everything is simple. Objects are presented in the simplest possible way, without embellishment, or decoration. These are humble pieces and there is no pretense or attempt at anything profound.

Front to back: Detail, Untitled (Line Drier) 2009,  Untitled (Fid) 2009

Artworks in this exhibition, like most of my works, are untitled. Titles are eliminated to avoid confusion, attempts at cleverness, or wordplay. Parenthetical titles are used for the purpose of helping me keep track of various works. Objects described in the titles may or may not be accurately named, but describe the individual piece to me.

The late Nobel Prize winning physicist, Richard Feynman, told a story of his youth at camps in the Catskills. The fathers of the children would visit on the weekends, and all the fathers would hike the trails teaching their children the name of this bird or that bird. On Mondays, the children would ask Feynman, "What kind of bird is that?" He would answer, "I haven't the slightest idea." So the kids would say his father did not tell him anything. "But it was the opposite" his father "had "taught him. His father would look at a bird and say, "Do you know what kind of bird that is? It's a brown throated thrush; but in Portuguese it's a ____, in Japanese it's a ____, in Italian it's a ____, etcetera. Now," his father says" you know in all the languages …what the name of that bird is and …you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You only know about humans in different places and what they call the bird. Now" says Feynman's father, "let's look at the bird."**

I believe we are all capable of learning something if we look at the bird.

** The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman, 1999

Detail: Untitled (Line Drier) 2009

 

Untitled ( Enciclica), 44"H. x 37" W. x 2" D., Encaustic on wood with objects, 2009