RMW Ramblings

  Papageno Our Christmas paintings have come down and others have gone up on our walls  Among them is Papageno.     Mozart's Die Zauberfl öte (The Magic Flute) is my favorite opera .   Papageno, the opera's protagonist, is a bird catcher and is often costumed in feathers which I have reduced here to a feather skirt.   He has his pipes and bells which play a role in the plot.   He has entranced a pheasant here.   Mozart conducts the proceedings from a box bordering the opera house proscenium arch.  Mozart's monogram initials are on the upper right on the curtain. My monogram signature in the same style are in the lower left.  

  Orpheus  Ὀρφεύς   O ver the summer the ice cream truck visiting Carpenter's Point announced its presence by playing a few bars of "Turkey in the Straw."  (Its competitor, theme "The Entertainer,"  was absent this year.)  "Turkey in the Straw" reminded me of my years in the late 1950s as a member of the Orpheus Club of Wilmington, a men's chorale group that went back decades.  The memory inspired me to paint a bust of Orpheus himself coming partially to life and singing.

  The Big Bands at Sunnybrook Ballroom I ran across this poster at an antique mall and it brought back memories. The 1950s were the waning years of the big band era, but Sunnybrook Ballroom in Pottstown, PA gave me and some of my friends the opportunity to hear, and dance to, the live music of Stan Kenton, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Les Elgart, and others, including a new name at that time, Maynard Furgeson.  There were many trips up US 202 and PA 100 on Saturday evenings in my 1948 Studebaker Land Cruiser sedan, and sleepy drives back.  Sunnybrook was alcohol free and welcomed teens. I welcomed at least one New Year in at Sunnybrook. A few times I had a chance to chat briefly with some of these major bandleaders, including Louis Armstrong. In 2007 Arcadia Publishing published a picture history of Sunnybrook by Thomas Sephakis, The Sunnybrook Ballroom. The Kenton poster above does not have a year, but October 3 fell on a Saturday in 1959.  I think I was there.

  Handel The Messiah  For Unto Us An important part of the Christmas season for me is The Messiah , the oratorio by  George Fredrick Handel [ Georg Friederich Händel].   In the 1950s I was part of the chorus in performances of The Messiah for several years with the Wilmington's Capella Club at Grace Methodist Church in front of their magnificent stained glass window by Louis Comfort Tiffany.    My painting above, For Unto Us, shows Handel, with an organ pipe rank halo, conducting a small chorus and instrumental ensemble,  on a gallery wrapped canvas with a baroque crest  (see this blog August 03, 2021.) I retained my worn and annotated  Schirmer score and paid for a new replacement for the Club.  A few years later I hand rebound my copy with scrounged materials.  The black cloth was scrap from blackout fabric in our Berkeley lab where we were doing research requiring darkroom conditions.  The framed title was assembled from t...

  Cards of Christmas Past 1978 Art Deco Clouds For our 1978 card I didn't print from a linoleum block or with a "silk" screen.  In fact, I didn't hand print them at all. I drew the card design in ink and printed them with a Xerox copier, then hand painted them in watercolor individually.  The drawings and my text were done in an art deco style.  The quote is from the Book of Isaiah.  Many of the themes and quotes on our early Christmas Cards were directly from, or influenced by, the libretto of Handel's The Messiah, which drew extensively on Isaiah.  For a few years in the 1960s I was a participant in Wilmington's Capella Chorus, and performed  The Messiah annually.   That oratorio is still an important part of the Christmas season for me.   Here's the front of the card... And here's the inside...  Again the cards were printed on one side of the paper and folded in thirds.  Our family monogram star and the date were on the bac...

  2 August 2021 Blackground Paintings 3 Innovators "Poe Meets Dickens"     In March of 1842 Edgar Allan Poe called on Charles Dickens at the United States Hotel in Philadelphia.   This painting depicts Poe reading from a manuscript to the seated Dickens.   The raven in the upper left connects the two in literature.   Dickens' pet raven, "Grip," was included in his novel Barnaby Grudge in 1841.   The bird died that year and is preserved in a display case in the Rare Books department of the Philadelphia Free Library.   Poe's most famous work, The Raven, appeared in 1845.   Dickens here gestures to the date 1842 Phil ª , the year and place of their meeting, on the book before him.   The gold ornamental bracket partially framing the scene is characteristic of 19th century book binding gilt stamped covers.   I have signed in a monogram I designed in the same spirit. "Saints of Science"   Modern science owes much of its found...