Buttnekkiddoodles

 
Got  in a weekend at Rachel & Bob’s beach house in Michigan. Chicago has been really going thru it and it was necessary to take a break. Between the demonstrations which have seen the torching of police cars and property damage, shootings, the pandemic, loss of employment, the restrictions on public gatherings, the closing of so many restaurants, and the general anxiety increased by truly depressing news cycles, Giamila & I hunkered down in Sawyer for a few days. If you’re going to feel isolated and cut off, you might as well be in a gorgeous environment where you can take off the masks, swim on the clean side of the lake, and go pick blueberries.
 

Drawn on #clairefontaine Stillman & Birn Nova Series Beige and Goldline Watercolour sketchbook with #fabercastell Essentio broad nib fountain pen and Pitt Artist Pens.

 
Took a calming break from the city and parked my arse in my friend’s beach house near Sawyer, Michigan. Top image is Bob’s babe magnet Jeep under a tarp.
 
Sitting at the top of the staircase that used to lead down through a short span of woods to the beach. No longer in use in order to protect the dunes that were planted with sea grass. Due to a rise in lake level and because erosion has been so bad that 20 yards of beach, those dunes bearing the sea grass are also being undermined.

Drawings made using a broad nib Faber-Castell Essentio Black Leather fountain pen, DeAtramentis Document Black Ink, Pitt Artist Pens, Albrecht Dürer Watercolour Markers on Clairefontaine Goldline Watercolour sketchbook (top) and Stillman & Birn Gamma Series sketchbook.

So I make a habit of drawing statues and in light of the ongoing discussion of the role & purpose of commemorative statues, I’ve documented some controversial pieces.
Today I finally decided to head to the Gen. Philip H. Sheridan Monument at the north end of Chicago’s Lincoln Park at Belmont Ave and Sheridan Ave. That statue was created by sculptor Gutzon Borglum, more about him later. My girlfriend was reluctant to accompany me but did so any how. More on that later.
The early years of the Civil War were not going well for the USA and Pres. Lincoln was often frustrated in finding commanding generals who in his words,”would fight.” Eventually he found and promoted three who had the knack for battle. Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan. Chicago has paid homage to these gentlemen in the naming of many locations and features. Lincoln Ave, Lincoln Park in which there is an equestrian statue of Gen. Grant, Grant Park wherein Lincoln’s statue can be found, Sheridan Ave, beside which stands Sheridan’s equestrian statue at the Belmont intersection. Just south of Chicago in Frankfort, a marker denotes the approximate burial place of Sherman’s famous warhorse, Sam.
Much attention has been drawn to the statues, parks, boulevards, and buildings, most erected long after the Civil War, honoring Confederate soldiers and statesman. I went to John H. Reagan High School in Austin, Texas, the former treasurer of the Confederacy. It has only recently had it’s named changed.
But let’s have a look at who some of the celebrated figures of the North were. Let’s take Philip H. Sheridan for starters. He was the North’s most successful Calvary officer, an equal to his famous Confederate counterpart, J.E.B.Stuart. It can be said that both men had a taste for combat. Sheridan employed scorched-earth tactics in the war including destruction of economic infrastructure and was instrumental in forcing Gen. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.
After the war, Sheridan was appointed head of the Military Division of the Missouri to “pacify the Plains.” He applied his usual vigor unleashing the brutal talents of another Calvary officer known for his zeal, one George Armstrong Custer. Sheridan approved of the rampant slaughter of Bison as a means to starve out the native tribes of the Plains saying,”Let them kill, starve and sell until the Buffalo is exterminated”. Sheridan is also famous for his quip to Comanche Chief Tosawi that ,”The only good Indian he ever saw was a dead Indian.” That quote was the reason Giamila declined to go with me while I drew Sheridan. She relented when I assured her I would give a frank account of his record.
Sheridan was also sent to oversee the protection of Yellowstone Park and prevent the destruction of natural formations and wildlife and personally organized opposition to developers desire to sell off Park lands. Yellowstone’s Mt. Sheridan bears his name in tribute to his role in the Park’s development.
During the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, Sheridan was not only brought in to maintain order but utilized the bombing of certain structures to limit the spread of the fire in South Chicago. Hence some of the gratitude of the city of Chicago and Illinois, a state which lost 31,000 men fighting to preserve the Union.
Now as promised, more on the sculptor who created this memorial, one Gutzon Borglum. If his name doesn’t ring a bell, you’re most certainly familiar with his grandest work, the massive granite heads of presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Yup, Mount Rushmore. That Gutzon Borglum. Before that, he got his first crack at large scale sculpture and mountain carving with a commission to honor Confederates Jefferson Davis and Generals Lee and Stonewall Jackson offered to him by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. In addition to those gentlemen he agreed to include a Ku Klux Klan altar in his plans for the memorial to acknowledge a request of Helen Plane in 1915, who wrote him:”I feel it is due to the KKK that saved us from Negro domination and carpetbag rule, that it be immortalized on Stone Mountain”. Ah Americans and their tricky history.
Clearly, Sheridan was a determined individual present during crucial times in our history and certainly a figure of mixed reputation. The most important dialogue before us is who are we as a nation and how do we move into the future with a clear eyed look to become a cohesive, cooperative society built on dignity, respect and honesty and capable of solving the immense challenges before us.
If this means we remove honorariums to figures whose exploits remind some of our citizens of their injury and sacrifice, or display those memorials in an institution with full context, that should be a doable task in fulfilling our obligation to our creed that all men are created equal 

Drawn with #fabercastellusa Basic Black Leather fountain pen and F-C Pitt Artist Pens including Pitt Big Brush White on Stillman & Birn Nova Series Beige sketchbook.

  Last Saturday I made my way to Calvary Cemetery on a day of exquisite beauty. The light was intense, producing strong, crisp contrast and deep shadows. A fairly chilly day for mid June at 60F, and a cool breeze from the lake meant the necessity of a sweatshirt despite the heat of direct exposure to the sun.

I had expected to meet up with a group of artists also going there to sketch, but, despite the relative openness and simple layout of Calvary, we never bumped into one another. Deep into the cemetery there are sufficient crypts and statuary and scattered cedars to screen people separated by only a couple hundred yards.

Calvary Catholic Cemetery was created because 19th century Irish residents of Chicago were being excluded from burial in some of the city’s cemeteries.

I brought a simple kit of Pitt Artist Pens including my some of my dwindling supply of the various  #fabercastellusa PAP Big Brush Grays. I will be truly bummed, if not challenged to become adept with other medium. I also used a Faber-Castell Black Leather fountain pen filled wit DeAtrementis Document Black Ink. The top sketch is in a #clairefontaine Goldline Watercolor sketchbook, the bottom sketch is on a on Stillman & Birn Nova Beige sketcbook. White Big Brush Pitt Artist Pens gave me the sky and highlights.

Jacksonville, Florida takes down Confederate monument after 122 years.

In October of 2017 I traveled to Jacksonville, Florida to give some demonstrations. On a day off I needed to mail a package and headed downtown to a shipping service just off Hemming Park. Downtown was pretty quiet and since I was unfamiliar with Jacksonville I decided to nose around. I noticed a tall monument in the center of Hemming Park which appeared to have a soldier atop the pedestal. As I stood on the Southern edge of the park I saw an historic marker and upon reading it discovered that behind me had stood the Woolworth building which had been the site of Civil Rights demonstrations in the early 1960’s. In 1963 African American students and a white professor had sat at the counter looking to be served and were met with no service and humiliating treatment. Drinks were poured on the student and professor.
In 1960 the demonstrations led to violent clashes between whites and blacks which became known as Ax Handle Saturday. I had known of the lunch counter demonstrations but did not realize they had been in Jacksonville nor did I know of the severity of the attacks on demonstrators on the day which became known as Ax Handle Saturday. I was stunned to be standing on the site of such momentous events in this country’s struggle for Civil and Human Rights.
I then walked over to what expected might be another monument to Confederate soldiers erected in the Jim Crow era that followed the post Civil War Reconstruction period. I had just come from New Orleans where the statue of Gen. Robt. E. Lee had just been removed. As I suspected, it was a Memorial to the Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War. On the monument we’re the words, “Our Heroes” and “God Bless Our Country”. The date of commemoration was 1898, solidly in the Jim Crow Era.
As I was drawing the statue, [as I have drawn and documented other monuments to the Civil War, in particular the monuments erected to commemorate the secessionist movement that waged war against the United States of America in order to defend the institution of slavery, and the racist White Supremacy legacy], an African American gentleman who had been walking around the park, passed close by me and muttered lowly but sufficiently for me to hear, comments about a “white mutherfucker” that I felt were very likely directed at the dude wearing a Texas Longhorn baseball cap and sketching the vestige of the Lost Cause. The city of Jacksonville had been locked in a dispute over the removal of these monuments as had/have the other cities and states still exhibiting them. If I was in fact the gentleman’s intended person of disgust, and if it was in regards to an apparent interest in the symbol of the savage oppression and ongoing injustice to African Americans, he could little know that I, who was a child of southern parents, no longer romanticized the history of the old south nor the Confederacy, am a firm unionist and applaud the removal of these monuments. We have still a lot of reckoning and healing over a truly grievous part of our history.

Drawn with a Graf von Faber Chevron fountain pen and Pitt Artist Pens.