improbable threads

Pleased and bemused by the crossing of two surfing trajectories:

First foray: Facebook to the Kenneth Rexroth Archive to Michael McClure’s Seven Things About Kenneth Rexroth, specifically #3, referencing Morris Graves, North Coast surrealist painter and mystic:

Rexroth had a collection of original pastels by Graves, and they were thumb-tacked up around the Rexroth menage. When I went in the children’s room, Mary and Katherine’s room, the Morris Graves pastels had been thumb tacked at the eye level of the little girls, so they could enjoy them. No one in those days could afford to frame a work of art. No matter that these were museum pieces. I had an illumination – get it up – thumb-tack it up. Love it, and see it now. And don’t worry what the kids will do to art, they must deepen their experience with it as we must. This was far from the bourgeois sensibility of fear for the streak of a child finger over a surface. It changed my ideas of art.

Brief surfing on Graves, especially looking at some of his paintings, being frustrated that I couldn’t view them very readily online.

Second foray, several days later: Geof Huth’s blog dbqp, where I check in periodically, to Alice Leach’s blog. Stopping to love her work and how it integrates handwriting and text, and especially her titles. Via her profile, found her other blog Power of Place, full of the wonderful history and artwork surrounding Dartington Hall School. Also her portfolio site where I found her geographical location:

Alice Leach
Totnes
Devon
United Kingdom

(The “Totnes” led to another interconnected trail, but that’s another story.)

Also found her list of exhibitions, including one entitled “Power of Place – Celebrating the Cultural Legacy of Dartington Hall School” that mentioned Mark Tobey’s name, which I recollected from earlier research on Morris Graves. Curious, went back to Power of Place blog and looked up Mark Tobey and found out about his “white writing” paintings. Had to Google them, so I could see what this looked like. (I found it a little too dense for my liking, and it did not seem to fit the label “calligraphic.”) From thence, somehow ended up here: “Mystic” Painters of the Misty Northwest, which summarized the whole connection nicely. There is a lot more available online by looking up that title, which stems from a LIFE magazine article, September 1953.

All this seems very improbable, evidence of some weird subsurface tracking that directs attention around the Internet on invisible threads. I’m especially impressed by the geographic leap from Devon to the Pacific Northwest.