Beach Scene, New London

Beach Scene, New London, 1918

William J Glackens

Artchive: William Glackens (1870-1938)

About.com: Bathing At Bellport 1912

Wikipedia: William K Glackens

Tiles Of Time

Four days of heavy rain sure can disrupt the best of plans for spring commissioning. The sanding, painting, and polishing all get postponed as I try to find some chore to tackle below deck. I check the hoses and clamps on the diesel, tighten the loose handle on the ice-box, then organize the storage lockers. I even give the stove and head a good scrubbing.

Marine stoves and heads have a way of getting filthy whether they are used or not. I distinctly remember cleaning them thoroughly when I moved ashore last fall. For a moment, I suspect that Charlie Sheen had been partying aboard this winter, but the liquor cabinet is intact, and I move on to other theories.

There are plenty of other projects in the cabin, but they should wait for drier weather. Sanding the teak trim, along with some minor epoxy work both require the hatches and companionway to be open. Those jobs will be addressed another day. Besides, no matter how comfortable a cabin may be, it begins to feel claustrophobic when forced to spend the day below. By noon, I decided to call it a day, and head for the library.

I don't know how many others from the boatyard make use of the Acton Library on rainy days, but I suspect I am not the only one. When the librarian asked for a local address, I told her I was on a boat, and our conversation never missed a beat. Several people browsing the aisle of nautical books only strengthened my suspicions.

I spend an hour or so on the computer, check out the updated version of Don Casey's This Old Boat, and read several chapters from an out-of-print book chronicling the history of the Fall River Steamboat Line.

What really grabs my attention, however, is a 24-foot tile mural that lines the entryway. Sponsored by the Friends of Acton Library, and created by artist Marion Grebow, the "ceramic quilt" illustrates the history of Old Saybrook, as well as the maritime significance of the town's location at the mouth of the Connecticut River. It is an impressive, informative, and unique piece of work.

See,...rainy afternoons in May aren't always my least productive days.

Grebow Tiles: website

Acton Public Library

Friends Of Acton Library

Clouds In The Sound

Clouds In The Sound  by Del-Bourree Bach

Mystic Seaport: Plein Air & Summer Exhibition

Mystic Seaport: Artist Biography

Maritime Art Gallery

Watercolor Therapy

One of the nice things about this blog is the people I have "met" along the way. I am not sure how Joey (AKA Whitemist)  and I first learned of each other's blog, but I would guess it was through BlogStamford. A native of Texas, he has been working as a local health department chemist for over 30 years. Some of his posts bring a scientific angle to the world that I do not possess.

As I followed his blog more, I realized he wasn't just some guy in a lab coat writing about the chemical compounds of sewage. His blog became a way to share many of the thoughts he had about life. I also learned that he was a painter who had lost his ability to paint. A short time after starting his blogs, doctors found a large, operable tumor in the back of his head. He is still going through recovery a year and several months after an operation that left him with double vision. According to Joey, his blogs became an outlet for him to share his recovery and find, to great surprise, that he could paint again.



Some of you may recognize the top painting of the Schooner Harvey Gamage. This was inspired by a photo I posted last June of her entering the Mystic River. The bottom watercolor is not of Long Island Sound, but instead it is a scene from Chesapeake Bay. Nonetheless, I think it captures the same imagery that many of us here often think of.



Joey K's Place

Joey K On The Environment

JKP: Paintings

Oyster Bay By William Jonas

I cannot recall when I first saw this painting, but I do know that I have always liked it. The slight hint of fall foliage; the sun low in the sky; I look at this and think a warm afternoon in early October. I read somewhere that the boat in this painting is the Clearwater. Oyster Bay holds it's annual Oyster Festival this time of year, so it could very well be her.



Born in Sea Cliff in 1948, William Jonas has lived in Oyster Bay for over 50 years. His portfolio includes many paintings of ships and boats along this part of the North Shore.



Oyster Bay Frame Shop: William Jonas

Oyster Festival: 2009 List Of Ships



image credit: N.... Authors

Artists Along The Way

Top to bottom: Block Island, Mystic, Block Island (again), Rye, September 2009

September

SEPTEMBER
From dewy lanes at morning

The grapes' sweet odors rise
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies

By all these lovely tokens
September days are here
With summer's best of weather
And autumn's best of cheer

But none of all this beauty
Which floods the earth and air
Is unto me the secret
Which makes September fair.

Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)

SEPTEMBER: Quotations

Poem Hunter: Complete Poem

Wikipedia: Helen Hunt Jackson

photos: West Cove, Noank, September 2009

Sunset, Greenport

Sunset, Greenport 1950 by Whitney Hubbard (1875-1965)

New York Times: Greenport Painter's Art Spared From Obscurity
Greening Gallery
Spanierman Gallery

Neither Out Far Nor In Deep

The people along the sand
All turn and look one way
They turn their back on the land
They look at the sea all day

As long as it takes to pass
A ship keeps raising it's hull
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull

The land may vary more
But wherever the truth may be
The water comes ashore
And people look at the sea

They cannot look out far
They cannot look in deep
But when was that ever a bar
To any watch they keep?

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Eatons Neck 1872

Eatons Neck by John Frederick Kensett (1816-1872)
Metropolitan Museum Of Art, New York

New York Times: Final Strokes Are Kensett's Best

Watercolor Lights

During many of my coastal explorations, I have stumbled upon an artist quietly at work. The paintings shown here however, were discovered via the internet. I was looking for some information on a particular lighthouse, when I happened to discover Al LaBanca's enjoyable American Lighthouse Art website that showcases his work.
Lighthouses are his passion and he calls them the vanishing castles of America, because so many are abandoned and neglected. Al hopes his artwork will bring attention to theses castles and create an awareness that helps preserve them. Painting with watercolors most of his adult life, he made it his calling to paint lighthouses 15 years ago, upon retirement.
He has painted lighthouses from all over the world, but the lights of the Sound have been more than just an artistic subject for him. As a resident of Darien for over 40 years, Al and his wife Joan have sailed Long Island Sound and relied upon these lights many times (especially during some of his overnight races). They are the classic example of beauty combining with function.

American Lighthouse Art.com

Connecticut: Lighthouses
New York: Lighthouses
Rhode Island: Lighthouses

top painting:Execution Rocks Lighthouse
middle: Black Rock (Fayerweather Light)
bottom: Stratford Shoal Lighthouse (Middle Ground)
paintings are courtesy of American Lighthouse Art
New York Times: Execution Rocks Lighthouse Sold

Long Island Sound

Long Island Sound

I see it as it looked one afternoon In August, 

by a fresh soft breeze o'erblown

The swiftness of the tide,

 the light thereon A far off sail,

 white as a crescent moon

The shining waters with pale currents strewn

The quiet fishing shacks, the Eastern cove

The semi-circle of its dark green cove

The luminous grasses,

 and the merry sun

In the grave sky, 

the sparkle far and wide

Laughter of unseen children,

 cheerful chirps Of crickets,

 and low lisp of rippling tide

Light summer clouds

 fantastical as sleep

Changing un-noted,

 while I gaze thereon

All these fair sounds and sights

 I made my own

Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)

NPR: Poet Of the Huddled Masses

Poem Hunter: Emma Lazarus 

Jewish Virtual Library Biography

Long Neck Point From Contentment Island

Long Neck Point From Contentment Island
John Frederick Kensett (1816-1872)
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Antiques & The Arts Online: John Kensett And the Connecticut Shore

Cedarmere

As familiar as I am with Bryant Park, I never once gave thought to who it was named in honor of. William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) was a poet, journalist, and an editor for the New York Evening Post. From what I have read, he was a man of many varied interests, and maintained an eclectic group of friends. His most lasting legacy may be his role in supporting the creation of Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum Of Art.
His country estate known as Cedarmere, overlooks a narrow stretch of Hempstead Harbor in Roslyn. The house serves as a museum, which has limited hours during the winter months, but the grounds are accessible year round. There are 7 acres that consist of lawns, footpaths, and a pond.
When not writing about political and civic issues, Bryant was known for his poetry that used nature as a metaphor. It does not take much stretch-of-the-imagination to think many of his words may have been written right here.

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead
They rustle to the eddying gust,and to the rabbits tread;
The robin and the wren are flown,and from the shrubs the jay,
And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the gloomy day.

The Death Of The Flowers

William Cullen Bryant: Poems
Cedarmere: Photos at Old Long Island
Kindred Spirits (painting)
Map

The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls

The tide rises, the tide falls
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveler hastens towards the town
And the tide rises, the tide falls
Darkness settles on roofs and walls
The little waves with soft white hands
Efface the footprints in the sands
And the tide rises, the tide falls
The morning breaks, the steeds in their stalls
Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls
The day returns, but nevermore
Returns the traveler to the shore
And the tide rises, the tide falls

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Race Day On Long Island Sound

THE YACHTS
Brilliance of cloudless days, with broad bellying sails
they glide to the wind tossing green water

from their ship prows while over them the crew crawls

Ant-like, solicitously grooming them, releasing,
making fast as they turn, lean far over and having
caught the wind again, side by side, head for the mark

William Carlos Williams

The LIFE Magazine photo archives are now available online. (Thanks to Good Old Boat Redwing for the link) The photographs above are entitled Race Day On Long Island Sound. These photos immediately sparked a memory of a poem I first heard in high school English class. I did not remember much about the poem except that it was about a sailboat race, and there were similar pictures on the textbook page opposite the poem. There were also pictures of fruit opposite a poem about someone eating plums. Why I remember that, I have no idea.
Thanks to the wonders of Google, I was able to track it down.
It is funny how memory works.

LIFE Magazine Photo Archives
William Carlos Williams: The Yachts (complete poem)

photo credits:(top to bottom) Alfred Eisenstaedt 1947, Bob Gomel 1960, Alfred Eisenstaedt 1947

Deja Vu In Darien

It has been twenty plus years since I last visited Weed Beach in Darien. The 22 acre park and beach on Noroton Neck appeared exactly how I remember it. The tide was low, and so was the sun, as I walked along the shoreline. Cove Island Park, several miles away by land, was just a short distance to the west. Several gulls hunted the mudflats, keeping an eye on my presence as they searched for an afternoon meal. South of me was a large rock outcropping painted by the tides in green and brown, from the waist down. Some trees sprouted from the crevices, their roots clawing through the rock in search of soil. Something seemed awfully familiar.

I was not aware of John Frederick Kensett (1816-1872) when I visited here twenty years ago. In fact, I first learned of him from a New York Times article in 2001. Since then, I have learned of his work, along with his later years spent living and painting in Darien. Kensett lived on Contentment Island, which is on the eastern end of the Darien shoreline. Long Neck Point, the Fish Islands, and Scott's Cove are the subjects of some of his later works. But what about Study On Long Island Sound (above)? Are the rocks at Weed Beach depicted in this painting?

Anyone familiar with the Connecticut shoreline knows that "rocky" is the first adjective used in almost every description. From Hell Gate to Penfield Reef, one has to think long and hard to come up with a stretch of shoreline that is void of exposed bedrock and glacial erratics. Weed Beach is no exception. Perhaps this is all a coincidence. I have found no mention of Kensett in my research of Weed Beach, and the people I have asked, offered no insight. A woman walking her German Shepherd near the rocks, seemed to be reaching for pepper spray when I asked her about this. Not only did she never answer my question, she never even acknowledged it.

Most likely, Kensett was painting a scene near his studio on Contentment Island. That would be the logical scenario. But as I made my way home along Nearwater Lane, I passed a jogger about my age, and thought, "hey, that looks like a guy I went to school with".

Weed Beach Web Album