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12/14/2004: "The Ghost of Artistic Christmas Past"
C.F. Payne shares an office with me here at the art college. Chris has been doing the back of Reader's Digest now for about a year and a half. And I've
been his model for Santa two years in a row. He says that it isn't because I'm fat or jolly ( actually my students think I'm a bit of a curmudgeon) but because I come cheap and when I crinkle my eyes and smile, my cheeks become little round dumplings just above my beard. I don't know if I should be flattered or bill him for my time. Ah well, I guess I should just give in to the image of being a jolly old grandfather type. 'Cha Cha' is what my grandkids call me. Cha Cha is Croatian for 'grampa' -- or so my wife tells me. She's half-Croatian and that's what they called her grandfather. He had a remarkably large bulbous nose and I suspect that Cha Cha really means something like 'hey old man there's a potato hanging on your face!' I wouldn't put it past her. My wife is an incurable practical joker. So there it is. Now I'm Cha Cha Santa... ho ho ho!
So Payne shows up sometime in late September or early October with his digital camera, dresses me in a long sleeve t-shirt, an old dark brown suite vest, a pair of old wool, calf length baseball pants and a pair of red and yellow striped knee socks, poses me with various props (I bring my own reading glasses which I hang on the end of the potato on the front of my face) and somehow from the photos he manages to create a very believable image of Santa in front of my computer taking Christmas orders (last year) or looking over the shoulders of my elves at the new fangled global positioning device in my sled which we can't seem to figure out. And yes I hope he has to put a few pounds on me to complete the effect. I have no idea where he got the elves. It is the magic of illustration in the hands of a master illustrator. Christmas is still a spell of a sort after all. And Chris is quite a magician.
I remember the magic spell that Christmas cast when I was a kid in Baltimore Maryland. In Baltimore we were comfortably ensconced in a very ethnically diverse part of town with Italian, Jewish, Polish and German neighbors. I'm both Polish and German and still remember those and other languages wafting over garden fences and from porches across the street whispering in my ears as I played. We spent Christmas with cousins and uncles and Grandparents together in small row house parlors for dinners, the Christmas gardens under the decorated trees with little electric trains and miniature villages with trees made of green sponge, snow made of salt or sugar and the smell of electrically produced ozone coming from the little electric trains chugging through and around the miniature village. I was entranced by the little lights in the toy house windows under the tree. I remember getting very close to the village and squinting my eyes to make things seem bigger and more real. Much like I might do today while working on a painting to see the abstraction that is at work. Most magicians are really illusionists who protect their tricks. I like to think that in art the magic is most obvious as we see through the illusion. That a painting is made of palpable paint and yet the image is still a reality of it's own. No tricks, no smoke or mirrors, just art.
But a few years after moving from Maryland to Lawton Oklahoma things began to change--as a 6 year old Polish Catholic kid my new world was not nearly so warm and inviting. There were few Catholics. I only had one Puerto Rican friend who was Catholic. The Protestant spirit of Christmas in Southern Oklahoma of the early 60's was quite different then the cozy Catholicism I was used to. We still had our Christmas garden under the tree but at school I had to defend myself against other kids and even their parents who were quite sure that Catholics weren't really Christians. They said when Catholics are baptized they are only sprinkled with holy water instead of being fully immersed... so I began to think that a lot of my sins might not have washed off. You know my head was clean but my soul was still muddy.
And we drank real wine at Communion instead of grape juice so we must all be alcoholics or something. We were often told that Catholics followed Mary and the Pope and that we prayed to statues which was idol worship. True Christians, I was told, prayed only to Jesus. I knew lots more about Jesus than I did about the Pope. Until I was 15 or 16 I didn't even know the Pope's name. And even then I hadn't bought into the Cult of Mary. I do admit, however that I did ask a few Saints for a little help forgiving my Protestant friends from time to time. I remember an incident when the mother of one of my neighborhood pals gave me a Christmas cookie and chided me that I needed to accept Jesus before I could really understand the true meaning of Christmas. I even got my first religious history lessons about how Christmas wasn't really a Christian holiday at all but one that dated back to pagan times. Tis true-- but not something you tell a six-year-old. I didn't even know what a pagan was at the time. But somehow I was sure they had horns. And besides all that because we came from up north and had eastern accents that made us 'damn Yankees' even though Baltimore was beneath the Mason Dixon line. I
ended up getting a hell of an education with each religious slap in the face. At first Oklahoma seemed like Hell and Maryland seemed like Heaven. Today I have a better understanding of Protestants (I became a Quaker some years ago) and know that they aren't all mean spirited. In fact any group that is in the majority will spawn hypocrites at the lower end of the food chain who will ignorantly terrorize those of other beliefs or doctrines. Yes, living in Protestant Oklahoma as a young Catholic drove me to liberalism. Ah, but God does love a liberal giver according to the Old Testament. And Christmas was always about giving rather than receiving in my family.
My mother is an artist. She made pastel copies of famous paintings while the rest of us watched TV in the evening. It was her quiet creative time as she used to call it. She even taught me how to use a graphing system to enlarge a photo or painting so I could copy it-- My first art lessons. I was in the 4th grade.
We would spend many weeks leading up to Christmas making decorations for the house. She was very crafty and made the most beautiful Christmas cookies in the neighborhood. Making things was the norm at our house. Her artistry knew no bounds. Besides Christmas decorations she made our costumes for Halloween. She was our cub scout den mother so we put on the best skits because she helped us make such cool props and costumes...knights of the Round Table with poster board armor spray painted silver, Pancho Villa's gang with a fake 1920's Ford Sedan made out of old furniture boxes that we all drove onto the stage holding little handles on the back of the flat silhouette of the car while singing Celito Lindo and la Cucaracha... we were Aussies sitting around the campfire made of crepe paper stapled to logs hiding a small fan and light bulb that flickered orange and yellow like a real flame...we sang Waltzing Matilda. And one year we did a magic show with wardrobe boxes with false backs to disapear each other and another box with a false bottom so we could saw another kid in half. He would slip into the box, drop his butt into the false bottom and stick his feet out the other end and make blood curdling screams as the saw cut through the box. Sounds hokey now. But it was great fun at the time. Maybe these early experiences are why I enjoy the theatrics of illustration so much today. Certainly it had an effect on my artistic nature.
At Christmas we made tree decorations, wreathes, banners that we hung all around the corners of the ceiling, and flocking on the windows of snow men and snow flakes and Christmas trees, angels, stars of David (this was in the 60's in the Bible Belt and we weren't even Jewish) and crosses...and of course the smell of those famous Christmas cookies wafting through the house like sugary incense. Everything in the house seemed part of the Christmas spirit. 
For several years in a row my best friend David Hayes and I took up the tradition of Santa Hats. Mom had taught our Cub Scout den to make paper hats as one of our merit badge projects. So David and I got the idea to pretend to be Santa Hats (that was me) and his favorite elf named Cap (David) and teach my little brothers how to make hats. We would make a big deal out of introducing Santa Hats who dressed in a quasi Santa suite made of some old Christmas pajamas, red shirt and red and white striped pants (kinda like Chris Payne's baseball pants and striped socks now that I think of it), a white paper beard taped to my face and a conical paper hat made of red and green construction paper taped together and bobby pinned to my crew cut so it wouldn't fall off because of all the butch wax I had to use. We usually did this a few nights before Christmas. We would make dozens of hats, hats that looked like little rectangular canoes, like military hats, triangular hats that looked like sail boats, bishops mitres, conical wizards hats and hats that reminded me of the one the carpenter wore in Teniel's illustration for Lewis Carol's poem about the oysters.... All made of colored construction paper and Christmas wrapping papers and the comics section of the newspaper with school paste-- the kind with a brush stuck through the cap. We were enthralled with the theatrics even after my little brothers lost interest and went to sleep.
I remember the emotions that came with Christmas...first there was the idea that something important was happening...more important than Halloween, Valentines day, Labor day and Thanksgiving all rolled up together... something that could change not only my very soul and the souls of others but the whole world if we just exuded our good will towards each other. I'm not going to get into the theology, nor will I try to convince you to accept my faith because I never liked it when others tried the same with me-- I'm just saying my heart was full and I would go around in what seemed like a warm emotional aura brimming with good will that slowly built as we got closer and closer to that bright morning-- I truly felt that giving was better than receiving, that God loved a liberal giver, that God loved those people who had good will towards others ... at least all the way up to Christmas morning when that brightness turned into the lights of my fathers movie camera. He woke us up year after year as my brothers and I climbed out of bed to open our presents like actors in a Hollywood production with the glare and the little wind up whirring sounds of his 8mm Kodak. Then it was everyman for himself.
When I was a little boy in Maryland I loved cowboy films. So did my father. He was a big John Wayne fan. So when I learned we were moving to Oklahoma-- the land of cowboys and Indians --I was elated. It was as if God were answering my prayers. I think that idea alone sustained me for the first hard years of homesickness. I still remember the Mattel gun slinger set I got one year with a note from Santa saying I'd been a good boy. Twin chromed revolvers with plastic pearl handles in a fake hand tooled holster stamped on real leather, a cowboy hat and boots awaited me under the tree unwrapped and propped up so they would be the first thing I'd see. It didn't take long before we'd opened all the gifts, had our Christmas morning breakfast (including those beautiful cookies)- watched a few parades on our black and white Zenith TV (I always thought the Zenith lightening bolt logo was cool-- guess I've always been attracted to signs and symbols) and finally, at long last, I could grab my hat, strap on my guns and head out to play with my buds--most of whom had their own Christmas weapons. We'd play cowboys and Indians.
Some of my little pals were Native American boys! But the idea never struck that there was anything amiss in our games. It wasn't about being good guysvor bad guys, or oppressors and the oppressed. Why would we oppress each other? We needed enough bodies to play the game and didn't know what the word oppression meant anyway. We were all pals. It was about running and hiding in the tall grass near the train tracks behind our development, climbing around in the new houses in various stages of un-finish, climbing trees to ambush the other guy and just how cool and athletic you looked when you got shot and fell dying. And we all died and came back to life...the Protestants, those pagan Indian boys (most of whom were Protestant by then whether they liked it or not) and yes the one Catholic in boots and broad brimmed hat with the coolest set of guns you'd ever seen...one by one we all got shot, died a dramatically slow death with lots of falls, flips, summersaults, groaning, coughing and writhing on the ground. You had to do something cool if you were unlucky enough to get shot. The coolest of us found ways to fall off trash cans, out of trees and even the unfinished roofs of the nearby houses still under construction... it was your recompense to die cool... then miraculously rise from the dead to shoot it out again and again.
I remember later that day I loaned my guns to a couple of my friends who didn't get any for Christmas. I found an odd board in the shape of a rifle stock and a piece of scrap electrical conduit and some electrical tape left over in one of the new constructions and fashioned a rifle. My dad had a wood shop in the garage so we could always find a way to shape a gun or a spear and shield or cut our own skateboards to attach old steel skates, ramps to jump on our stingrays or just to build forts in the hay field behind the house. But when he caught us in the back yard shooting at each other and those two boys had my new guns while I fought proudly with my artistically constructed rifle made of left over trash (found art you could call it) he hit the ceiling and swore he'd never buy me nice Christmas gifts again. You know I think that was when I figured out that Santa didn't really exist... although it took a while to sink in.
For a number of years, when my youngest son was old enough and my older one not too old to appreciate it, we made wood block greeting cards each holiday season. I would hand one or the other boy a piece of wood and a charcoal pencil with which they would draw a seasonal design. Then I would help them carve the image (I usually ended up doing most of the chiseling for fear of someone poking their own or their brother's eye out) and then we would ink the block and print 25 to 50 to send to relatives and friends as a Christmas card and as a gift. A limited signed and numbered piece of art. Two of my favorites are my youngest son's multi-colored 'Noel Hale-Bop' (the hand colored woodblock is pictured above) and my oldest son's bold black and white 'Sledding Hill' with kids sliding down hill on discs that look like aliens in flying saucers. It was our way of keeping my mothers tradition alive into another generation. Now that the kids are grown and mostly out of the house I barely have time to send out Christmas e-cards.
Now our kids kill each other in cyber space. Instead of fostering deep imaginative creativity their computer games seem primarily to teach our kids how to react before the other guy does. We were reading books while they watch videos. Our games were a stylized celebration of a historical myth about cowboys and Indians, a history we were surrounded by and that for many of us led to more interest in Indian history and culture as we grew older. Only then did we realize the myth was false. We were about visualization like Chris Payne's ad hoc Santa costume thrown together from bits and pieces to feed his visual imagination. The new, so called 'inter-active', computer culture seems more about preparation for driving tanks and flying bombers then learning to glean meaning from myth and metaphor or making fine distinctions between fact and fiction. Kids read less today, expect knowledge to enter their heads as if by clicking a button rather than any real effort, understanding or practice. I think I see much less interaction between students and even less between students and faculty. But maybe I'm suffering the cynical and age old sin of sanctifying my childhood memories as I grow older. Maybe there really isn't any difference between computer games and playing cowboys and Indians. Let's hope I'm wrong about it. Certainly there are a number of students who put the computer to better use. Like any tool, the computer can define a persons character by how it is used.
The last few seasons since 9-11 have been under a dark cloud. We're still celebrating the season in spite of the cloud whether our reasons are spiritual or monetary or just pure habit. But whether you believe the reason for the season is religion (be it winter solstice, Christ's birth, Chanukah, Kwanzaa or the Force that through the green stem drives the flower) or maybe the season's income supplements your living (as it does many artists and artisans), the warmth of the season, like peace, has begun to seem as passe as poetry, handmade toys and easel painting. While innocence can never be reclaimed, acts of love can still be delivered. I happen to think painting is an act of love.) At the very least I hope we can begin again to extend good will to those around us. It might just begin to generate a little warmth. I know I could use a little warmth these days couldn't you?
See you in February when I come back from vacation. I'll be writing about my Big Apple experiences from February through May.
Happy Holidays!
Peace and forgiveness to all and to all a good night.
Ho, ho, ho...
>From Cha Cha.
