The Shakers: A Community of Faith and Work

When Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, visited a Shaker community in 1959, he felt a kinship with their spirit of simplicity:

They had the gift to express much that is best in the American Spirit. They exemplified the simplicity, the practicality, the earnestness, and the hope that have been associated with the United States. They exemplified these qualities in a mode of humility and dedication which one seeks in vain today in the hubris and exasperation of our country with its enormous power.

This quote, and the one from Charles Dickens below, come from a fascinating essay, "Thomas Merton and the Shakers" by Fr. Bernard van Waes. In it van Waes describes the Shakers––or to use their correct name, "Shakers" having come from Shaking Quakers because of their mode of worship, United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing––as a "new kind of monasticism"; like monks and nuns, the Shakers were celibate and lived apart from the world, though partaking in some commerce with it. This idea of "general monkhood" was something that struck me on my weekend visit to the Hancock Shaker Village museum; as I walked around the peaceful, well ordered grounds, and through the beautifully preserved buildings, I had a sense of a community gathered for a prayerful life, in which every task was performed as humble worship. The Hancock Shaker community was active from the late 1780s until 1960.

Mother Ann Lee, who came to the United States from England in 1774 to establish her new sect, and who her followers believed "embodied all the perfection of God in female form", said "Labor to make the way of God your own; let it be your inheritance, your treasure, your occupation, your daily calling." The dwelling house above....

....and the iconic round barn, are evidence of a clarity of thought and simplicity of form, having nothing extraneous to their function.

The round barn was efficient: there was access to all three levels from earthen ramps, and wagons could drive around the central area depositing hay, without having to back up. The cows faced the center for feeding. There are two Shaker inspired round barns, no longer in use, in my area of Vermont.

The Shakers interest us today because of their spectacular sense of design. They were adherents to "form follows function" long before modernism. One of their most famous products made for sale are the oval boxes, perfectly joined, seen here in modern reproduction. On the table are the molds used for making them. About work Mother Ann said:

Do all your work as though you had a thousand years to live, and as you would if you knew you must die tomorrow.

Another well-known Shaker design is the small elongated woodstove that they used throughout their dwellings and work spaces.

A Shaker Brother recognized the greater efficiency of a flat broom to a round one in about the year 1800.

This tin dust pan is a simple and elegant design.

Of course, the utopian community of Shakers was primarily a religious one, and their mission, as described on the museum's website, was to "live a perfect Christian life as portrayed in the gospels and in the early Christian communities". The room above is the Meetinghouse where the Brothers and Sisters would gather on Sundays for prayer. The prayer included singing and dancing, with men and women facing each other on different sides of the room. There is a video of Shaker songs and dances at the website link above. The words from one song say: "shake shake out of me all that is carnal".

                          

These two doors, one for men and one for women, are the entry to the Meeting Room.

During the 1890s the community no longer used the Meetinghouse for prayer, so they met in this room in the dwelling house. Women sat on the western side of the room, men on the east. You can see the beautiful built-in cabinetry that is found throughout this building.

This is the room of a Shaker Elder, someone who was responsible to "oversee the family placed under their care and to gather the family to them by the arm of love and rod of correction...." Shakers were unusual in having Elders and Eldresses, men and women, equal in the hierarchy of the community. Although for a leader, this room is as simple as that of the Brothers and Sisters. Notice the potty chair (there were privies outside for others) and the wash basin, which was the only sign of washing that I saw. I forgot to ask a docent about the Shakers' bathing habits. I mention this because there are written responses to visiting Shaker communities from several famous 19th century writers, who were not as taken with them as Thomas Merton was. Nathaniel Hawthorne visited Hancock in 1851 with Herman Melville and was very discomfited by what he saw in the Dwelling house:

It was a large brick edifice, with admirably convenient arrangements, and floors and wall of polished wood, and plaster as smooth as marble, and everything so neat that it was a pain and contstraint to look at it....The sleeping apartments of the two sexes had an entry between them, on one side of which hung the hats of the men, on the other the bonnets of the women. In each chamber were two particularly narrow beds, hardly wide enough for one sleeper, but in each of which, the old elder told us, two people slept. There were no bathing or washing conveniences in the chambers; but in the entry there was a sink and wash-bowl, where all their attempts at purification were to be performed. The fact shows that all their miserable pretense of cleanliness and neatness is the thinnest superficiality; and that the Shakers are and must needs be a filthy set. 

Oh my! Hawthorne felt the sect should be extinct. Melville, on the other hand, was writing Moby Dick at the time, and one source I read suggested that he got his inspiration for the very funny scene with Ishmael in bed with Queequeg from seeing the Shaker sleeping arrangements. Charles Dickens was another writer who had nothing good to say about the Shakers. His wry description:

we walked into a grim room, where several grim hats were hanging on grim pegs, and the time was grimly told by a grim clock which uttered every tick with a kind of struggle, as if it broke the grim silence reluctantly, and under protest. Ranged against the wall were six or eight stiff high-backed chairs, and they partook so strongly of the general grimness, that one would much rather have sat on the floor than incurred the smallest obligation to any of them. Presently, there stalked into this apartment, a grim old Shaker, with eyes as hard, and dull, and cold, as the great round metal buttons on his coat and waistcoat; a sort of calm goblin.

I was so fascinated by the evidence of Shaker life and work that I saw at Hancock that I am interested in these contemporary accounts, however raw. I was so far from finding the place grim, or a "pain and constraint to look at". There is a huge difference in aesthetic sensibility from the mid 19th century to the 20th and 21st centuries. Shaker aesthetics are even used as a jumping off point for a show of contemporary art, such as "Simplest Means". I apologize for the very long blog post, and there will be more to come on the Hancock Shaker Village; when I looked at my 200 or more photos, I was wondering how I would organize this material, so this is my introductory post. I am planning one on women's work and one on that of men, as they had very different spheres of activity, just as they were separated in all aspects of life. As a community they achieved a great deal.



Additional posts on Hancock Shaker Village:
At Hancock Shaker Village: Women's Work
At Hancock Shaker Village: Men's Work

A New Painting: "Red Hose"

Red Hose, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 6 1/4 x 8 1/4 in.

In Western culture we begin reading at the upper left and end at the lower right, so it follows that the lower right part of a painting is its visually heaviest area. Because of this I didn't know if the composition of this painting would work with its red curved cylinder and dark rectangle at the right. But I think that it does work, perhaps because of the angled shadow that pulls the eye leftward, or perhaps because of the shadow's contrast with the large expanse of light. The red hose was originally black, indented, and in pieces. It's also possible that the intensity of the red––although it's not a very bright red––lightens the right side of the painting. Putting a picture together is always a balancing act.

Red Hose detail

Gatherings of Tiny Flowers

Lilac

Many flowers are simple in form, such as the 3 petaled Trillium, or the 6 petaled tulip. Roses can be plain or frothy, as can peonies. Different from these singular flowers are the tiny flowers of many shrubs and small trees; grouped in long sprays or rounds they have a beautiful presence. First among these flowers, a glory of spring, is the lilac with its head made up of myriad 3 or 4 petaled flowers, so attractive to insects. Each year I look forward to watching the swallowtail butterflies sip from the flowers.

Nannyberry, in bud

The Nannyberry, a viburnum,  is a very large shrub that I'd planted as a small stick many years ago. Each spring it's covered with round clusters of white flowers, and red berries that are attractive to birds in the fall. I love seeing the early stages of tiny buds crowded together.

Nannyberry flowers

Later, looking closely through the camera lens I can see the gathering of a multitude of white flowers, decorated by long, yellow tipped stamens.

Red Osier Dogwood

These pretty, star shaped flowers are blooming on a shrub that grows wild here, and prolifically (I'm constantly back cutting newly appearing plants).

Bridal Wreath Spirea

The round arrays of blossoms are small and more delicate on the Bridal Wreath shrub, but they cover the bush almost completely now, a white cloud.

Chokecherry

Not all flowers are gathered into circular forms; the chokecherry, like the lilac, has a long form, more cylindrical than the lilac, gracefully drooping, inviting many insects.

American Cranberry

Another viburnum, the American cranberry has a circlet of larger flowers surrounding small ones, here not yet opened, at its center. The surprising thing about this configuration is that the outer, showier flowers are sterile and it's the tiny ones in the middle that are fertile.

Snowball Viburnum, green stage

The Snowball is a delight in spring with its round massed flower heads. I love how they start out green.....

Snowball Viburnum, white

.....and as the petals mature the flowers become a bright white, round fluffy balls nodding in the wind. With all these plants each individual flower is insignificant, but together they put on quite a show, a grand chorus working in concert.

A New Textile: "Red Bars"

Red Bars, hand dyed wool on linen, 12 x 10 in.

Like the last piece I completed, I was thinking of Russian Suprematism and Constructivism when I was working on the studies for this textile, such as this el Lissitzky graphic:

el Lissitzky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1920; poster. Image courtesy of Wikiart.org

My textile, however, carries no political or social meaning, but is about the formal aspects of an artwork: shape, color, texture, balance and tension. In my sketches I'd tried white bars with a red and black background, but I thought that black and white with red was more effective. I divided the rectangle in half diagonally. Rather than have a smoother line for the meeting of the black and white diagonals, similar to the outlines of the red bars, I chose to have a zigzag of black and white down the center.

Red Bars detail

I like the energy that the black and white steps of wool loops brings to the piece; a bit of complexity within the simple shapes of the design.

At the Met: Fields of Gold

Giovanni da Milano, Christ and Saint Peter; the Resurrection; Christ and Mary Magdalen, ca. 1360s; tempera on wood, gold ground.

Gold is a precious metal, along with silver and the platinum group of metals; precious because of its rarity and high economic value. But it is its beauty, its rich warm color, that has made it valuable to so many cultures over millennia. It has become a metaphor for the highest worth, material, spiritual, and aesthetic. On a recent visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I photographed Medieval and early Renaissance paintings that used a great deal of gold, laid on the panels using gold leaf. I wanted to think about how the expanse of gold which stood in for a landscape, as in the painting above....

Francescuccio Ghissi, St. John the Evangelist with Acteus and Eugenius, ca. 1370; tempera on wood, gold ground.

....and this one for instance, changed the meaning and the sense of space within the paintings. What we have instead of a worldly space is a spiritual one; instead of something measurable, there is limitless space, both flat and deep, changing with changing light.

Goodhart Ducciesque Master, Madonna and Child with the Annunciation and Nativity, ca. 1310-15; tempera on wood, gold ground.

The clarity of contrast between paint and gold ground makes the figures of Madonna and Child all the more important. There is delicate incising in the gold surrounding them, and its gracefulness is continued in the golden details of clothing. The entire panel is unified by the gold flowing throughout its images.

Maso di Banco, Saint Anthony of Padua, ca. 1340; tempera on wood, gold ground.

The presence of this rather austere saint is enhanced by the brilliant gold of his background. Gold is always more than just a color, here emphasizing the spiritual depth of St. Anthony.

Workshop of Agnolo Gaddi, Saint Margaret and the Dragon, ca. 1390; tempera on wood, gold ground.

This is a delightful small panel painting, lighter in feeling than the paintings above, though still depicting a saint. For me, the gold in this painting becomes more a part of the whole, perhaps because the colors of the figure do not separate it so dramatically from its ground.

Fra Angelico, A Bishop Saint, ca. 1425; tempera on wood, gold ground.

Fra Angelico takes a different approach in this small panel, having the saint surrounded by black, with a decorative border of gold that is repeated in the halo, cloak, and mitre. The saint is contained within a window of light and spirit.

Pietro di Domenico da Moltepulciano, Madonna and Child with Angels, 1420; tempera on wood, gold ground.

A heavenly gold is behind the angels and Madonna, and sparkles on her cloak. I don't know much if anything about Christian iconography, but these works make me think that gold is also seen as the light of God.

Miguel Alcaniz, Mission of the Apostles, ca. 1408; tempera on wood, gold ground.

One thing that's wonderful about the new installation of paintings at the Met is that they are putting on view some of the collection which I've never seen before, such as this Spanish painting, and the one below. There's an extravagance of design in these works that is exciting to see. The elaborate gold surround of this panel and the rows of round halos are gorgeous, belying the austerity of the rocky landscape. To me, it's a sumptuous religiosity.

Valencian Painter, Saint Michael and the Dragon, ca. 1405; tempera on wood, gold ground.

This Saint Michael is elegant and lithe, a golden dancer slaying a fearsome dark beast. The gold surrounding him brightens his aspect, imbuing him with light. 

Ishida Yutei, Flock of Cranes, Edo period, 1767-84; pair of six-panel folding screens; ink, color, and gold on gilt paper.

I recently read a long essay by the Japanese novelist Jun'ichiro Tanizaki titled In Praise of Shadows, written in 1933. Although it is too nationalistic for my taste, it has some interesting insights into Japanese aesthetics, and a paragraph about the use of gilt papers that helped me to understand something about gold in Medieval painting that I couldn't know from seeing the works in a museum: that the gold would glimmer out of a dark surrounding, such as that of a church. Its luster would make the paintings seem to be lit from within, or from some mystical source.

Shibata Zeshin, Three Crows in Flight and Two Egrets at Rest, late 19th century; two panel folding screen; colored laquer and white pigment on gilt paper.

Here is what Tanizaki wrote about gold:

And surely you have seen, in the darkness of the innermost rooms of these huge buildings, to which sunlight never penetrates, how the gold leaf of a sliding door or screen will pick up a distant glimmer from the garden, then suddenly send forth an ethereal glow, a faint golden light cast into the enveloping darkness, like the glow upon the horizon at sunset. In no other setting is gold quite so exquisitely beautiful. You walk past, turning to look again, and yet again; and as you move away the golden surface of the paper glows ever more deeply, changing not in a flash, but growing slowly, steadily brighter, like color rising in the face of a giant. Or again you may find that the gold dust of the background, which until that moment had only a dull, sleepy luster, will, as you move past, suddenly gleam forth as if it had burst into flame.

Gold is a remarkable material for art, carrying with it so much meaning, and such complex beauty. 

Something New: Small Drawings

sd 1, egg tempera on hand-toned paper, ca. 7 x 7 in.

I recently described myself as having a bad case of "multiple art personality disorder". My mind feels restless and open, enjoying the pursuit of new ideas. Actually, the idea for these small drawings has been percolating for a couple of years: I had a few pieces of rectangular parchment, on which I painted a couple of simple shapes, small and floating within a larger emptiness, inspired by Tantric drawings. Last year I did the same on pieces of toned paper, similar to the ones I am showing you now, but I just sat on the idea and didn't pursue it because I felt very uncertain about them. Well, I finally decided to tone a bunch of small pieces of paper, left over from tearing down sheets for my larger drawings; I prepared them at the same time as I did the paper for my most recent drawings. As I was painting the papers I was aiming for a variety of colors and surfaces, some with layered color, some transparent with brushmarks showing. I allowed a lot of accident, with puddling of color and inconsistent variations. (I describe the making of the hand-toned papers in this blog post.)

Then the big question was what to paint on them. I wanted them to have small shapes floating within the space of the paper; I thought of Tantric art and also the watercolors of Richard Tuttle. I began with sd 1 as I had with the similar work I'd done previously, by painting shapes on the paper, the larger square on the left, and two smaller ones at right.

sd 2, egg tempera on hand-toned paper, ca. 7 x 7 in.

Then I thought about what I was doing and realized that just arbitrarily putting down shapes was the wrong way to go about it. I determined to look at the paper, to pay attention to its color, its shapes, and to see in the paper what to paint on it. So I looked at this deep blue and purple paper with its vertical darks and felt it needed a simple vertical, one that started as a fine point and ended a little wider and rounded. It is a very light blue that hovers above the dark.

sd 3, egg tempera on hand-toned paper, ca. 7 x 7 in.

I love how this paper came out, almost like a violet and orange sunset. I painted a semicircular orange shape that repeated the rounded orange colors of the paper, and I added a small dot of red below it, giving it a tiny sliver of orange cradle below, hardly visible.

sd 4, egg tempera on hand-toned paper, ca. 7 x 7 in.

In sd 4, the brush had left an arc just below the center, and it looked to me that a sphere was perfect to nestle in that space. The dark curve above repeated a curve of the paper color. 

sd 5, egg tempera on hand-toned paper, ca. 7 x 7 in.

This paper is quite different in that I kept the color very transparent and the brush especially fluid. It seemed to need a simple arc of a contrasting yellow-green.

sd 6, egg tempera on hand-toned paper, ca. 7 x 7 in.

sd 6 has some gold in the layering of pigment on the paper; the choice of the blue was for a color contrast. As for the shape of the cross, I was thinking of horizontal and vertical, two main earthly directions. I wasn't thinking of a religious symbol, though of course it's hard to remove those references.

sd 7, egg tempera on hand-toned paper, ca. 7 x 7 in.

This paper was prepared with gold pigment (not real gold), so it changes its appearance with different light sources. I added shapes following the direction of the brushstrokes with which the gold is applied.

sd 8, egg tempera on hand-toned paper, ca. 7 x 7 in.

Finally, a fairly dark paper on which I felt I wanted to keep the sense of dusk, so painted forms that don't float too far above the ground, being fairly dark in hue and though warm in color, not intense.
So....here I am, again with something new, again being very uncertain. There is something in the improvisational aspect of these drawings that is similar to the potato prints I've been making, which gives me a bit more confidence. I'm open to critique....

A Walk in the Woods: Dress Whites, Hoods, and Fruiting Bodies

Late May into June is a time for small white flowers in the woods, as though announcing a bridal season. First to greet me as I step into the dappled darkness are the elegant little starflowers: pointed petals, pointed leaves, a bright green center and spreading stamens topped with yellow spheres.

A carpet of green dotted with white is found further down the path. This is the bunchberry, which confuses us in that its white "petals" are actually bracts, and the flowers are in the center.

I see several flowers made up of clusters, round as above, or in spikes. I don't know what this flower is, but its tiny flowers seem to explode from the center, the stamens reaching outward into space.

I think this may be a foamflower. The camera's close eye lets me see the spectacular sight of the tiny many-petaled flowers and their very long pistil and stamens. (click to enlarge and see details)

The wild lily of the valley has a similar structure to the two flowers above, though with fewer elements. They look like little Sputniks spinning about.

This too, probably a red baneberry, has the outstretched stamens. I wonder if the tiny size of the flowers makes this structure more important in pollination. They are all lovely to come across on the woodland path, so delicate and light and airy.

After the frothy whites of the small flowers, what could be more different than the large, sturdy, green and deep-red Jack in the Pulpits. Their vase shaped forms and curving hoods create dramatic characters along the woodland path. 

There is more to enjoy than flowers in the woods, though in a way, mushrooms are the flowers of the fungi living underground. They are its fruiting bodies (I love that phrase) that carry spores for reproduction. And how magical they are, appearing suddenly, seeming from nowhere. And how especially wonderful when a choice edible like a morel pops up in the middle of the path, a single grand mushroom with its complex cap, like a mass of cave dwellings.

I am ending with an image that may seem quite ugly, a mass of old shelf mushrooms that must have fallen together from their tree. On the forest floor they look almost like an animal pelt, dark and worn and furry. I see something compelling in this decaying mass: a complex layering of texture and deep colors, contrasted with the warm-colored gluey surface of the interior. Decay is part of the cycle of life and death, having a beauty of its own.

Four New Drawings

#35, egg tempera and graphite on hand toned paper, 15 x 15 in.

I enjoy surprises when I'm working, especially if they arise from frustration. When I was preparing the paper for this new series of works, I had some trouble getting color I was happy with. With #35, I started with a violet, but somehow it wasn't working, so I did something I didn't usually do, I layered another color, an earth red, on top of it. It became a small lightbulb moment: ah hah! I can mix colors one on top of the other for the tone; I do not have to use only one color. The results are less predictable, but very interesting and rich. 

#35 detail

The image in this piece was also a surprise, and it stopped me from going further. When I had painted the four circles––two light and opaque, and two darker and more transparent––a rounded cross of sorts appeared, something I'd not expected. I had planned to add another element, but those central shapes said no. 

#36, egg tempera and graphite on hand toned paper, 15 x 15 in.

This piece proceeded in a more straightforward way, with a single color for the paper, and a range of values of green for the shapes. The thing that did surprise, as often happens with these drawings, is the way the shapes enclosed by the painted shapes take on importance. In this case, the two elongated, pointed ovals in the center keep staring at me from under their veil.

#37, egg tempera and graphite on hand toned paper, 15 x 15 in.

The white forms began as flat shapes in my mind and on my study, but as I painted the first layer of transparent white, in which I followed the form of what is a vesica piscis, I was surprised and intrigued by their strange illusion; strange in that the center of the form, showing more dark, can be seen as depressed as easily as raised. 

#37 detail

So instead of painting more layers across the form so as to flatten it, I continued to work with the volumetric idea, an idea that wouldn't have occurred to me to try unless I came across it by chance.

#38, egg tempera and graphite on hand toned paper, 15 x 15 in.

The color of the paper on this final drawing went through the same process as the first: I started with one color, a red, wasn't satisfied; thought I'd try some gold for fun, but it was too strong; put several layers of transparent red on top of the gold. Now there's a definite shimmer to the paper, and it changes in different light, but it isn't too overwhelming. The colors of the shapes, the red and green being fairly opaque, give a sense of solidity on the more airy red/gold ground. There are always new lessons to be learned if we're only open to them.