Meditations on time, history, and myth

Norfolk woodworker Mark Burke in his shop with his walnut chair based on a design by Scottish architect/designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928).
Jennifer Almquist
Norfolk woodworker Mark Burke in his shop with his walnut chair based on a design by Scottish architect/designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928).
Three friends have joined forces to exhibit their art in a pop-up gallery exhibit in the Royal Arcanum building at Station Place in Norfolk. From Aug. 16 through Sept. 2, painter Ann Getsinger and woodworkers Mark Burke and Peter Murkett will show their furniture, painting, sculpture and objects. Kozmik Braid is the name they coined for their eclectic offering. According to the artists the name is “a riff on each other’s work, weaving utilitarian furniture with pure art.”
Norfolk woodworker Mark Burke said of their friendship, “I have collaborated with Peter on projects for probably 25 years and have always been impressed by his sense of design. He can make subtle changes that instantly make the piece more pleasing. Peter introduced me to Ann, who is well-known in the Northwest Corner and is very passionate and energized with her creativity. I am thrilled to participate in this Art and Design Pop-Up exhibition with them both.”
Burke continued, “My initiation into woodworking was out of necessity, followed by three and a half decades of accumulating tools and essential knowledge. Over time you witness many designs by others and are slowly inspired to find your own spin on things. Slowly tweaking and playing with everything that passed by, having total creative freedom within my shop.”
Burke professionally uses computers to draw plans and program electronically controlled tooling to cut wood parts. His playful spirit is given free rein in the work he has made for this show, which includes chair designs based on Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) and furnishings and objects informed by the work of architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
Burke’s pieces include lyrical music stands made of black walnut, a graphic metal light echoing Wright’s complex geometric patterns, and a minimal dining table that embodies architect Louis H. Sullivan’s 1896 design principle: Form follows function.
Burke said, “People working with wood can often choose to use figured material. I have chosen to use more subdued lumber so that it is the joinery of the shapes and the overall piece that attracts your eye.” Burke’s precision marries perfect joinery with his deep knowledge of wood. Rather than break free of technology, he has bent it to his creative vision.
Jennifer Almquist
Southfield woodworker Peter Murkett demonstrating the translucence of the thin wood wall sconce he designed.
Southfield, Massachusetts-based Murkett’s love of the simplicity of Shaker design is evident in the clean lines and functionality of his creations. Murkett cradles a perfectly formed bowl in his weathered hands and explains how the Shakers added the curved handle for hanging the water dipper on the edge of their buckets.
“I was struck by the turned form of the Shaker dipper at first sight. This handled bowl that must have been turned on a lathe in the shape of a bowler hat, with the brim mostly cut away to make the handle. The Shakers thrived in the early years of industrial development, mid-nineteenth century. They valued machines like the lathe for the efficiency they offered in reproducing shapes. But handling a Shaker dipper was a revelation: the shape begged to be cradled in the hand; they have an uncanny, tactile appeal that seems to replicate the visual appeal of Shaker design,” mused Murkett. Other examples of his work, informed also by the grace of Windsor chairs, can be found at www.newenglandmodern.com. According to Murkett, his objects and sculptures are “meditations on time, history, and myth.”
With his mystical sense of history, meaning, and a poet’s quiver, Murkett conjures up stories and subtle ironic nods to current events within his wooden objects. His skill is that of a master craftsman. One expects secret drawers and hidden messages within his dovetails.
After a lifetime making furniture to grace the homes and gardens of countless clients, Murkett will be showing his own designs. A talismanic carving, created when he was a boy of twelve, forms the soul of his offerings in this upcoming exhibit. This odd little object remains an icon to Murkett, and inspired his poem:
The Boy I Was
1.
The boy I was had a cheap set of woodcarving tools
maybe six—a gouge or two, a veining tool, others too.
The professional I later became never tossed them out
or used them again. Memento only, and good for that,
like the object that boy carved which still remains
(although the making lies buried deep, beyond reach):
a head in lightbulb shape, wide-open eyes (gouge)
a tidy mop of hair (veiner), a mustache (ditto),
no chin, all in mahogany, cleanly bored to fit snug
on the shifter tip of the family ’56 Plymouth,
the car he learned to drive.
2.
Decades later I resurrected the shifter tip
that boy carved so long ago, hardly knowing how,
the wood long separated from the car
(new in his boyhood) now a junk somewhere
or even less than that—but maybe more:
meltdown steel remade as what? a machine, a tool,
a part fit to some greater whole, used anew.
My father, bent by many years walking
now grips the shifter tip atop his cane,
the head from off the column upright at last
in the hand of my old man. I adjust my step to his,
glad we go this way together.
Painter Ann Getsinger in her studio in New Marlborough, Massachusetts.Jennifer Almquist
Ann Getsinger (anngetsinger.com) paints fantastical landscapes which include deep evening sunsets, skulls of wild animals, seashells, and natural flora and fauna. Dreamlike and evocative, her skilled oil paintings contrast human cycles with the cycles found in nature.
Getsinger said of her art, “My work is more connected to the recent offshoots of the realist tradition, for example, Jamie Wyeth as he expands on the spectrum of carefully observed work into pure abstraction all expressed within the same image. Life is both observable and unseeable, feelings come and go, stories unfold multidimensionally, and it’s all pure change. How can a human being bear this… without art?”
In the center of her studio, built in 1988 in a meadow in New Marlborough, Massachusetts, a tall window lets in the cold Northern light. A velvet drape, the color of clematis, gives her workspace the mood of a Renaissance atelier. On her tall French easel an oil painting of an enigmatic rooster in a shroud adds a surreal element. Getsinger, who is represented by galleries in Maine and nearby Housatonic, Massachusetts, will be showing new, unexpected work in this Norfolk show including an “umbilical” figurative drawing (over six feet wide) and a flying sculpture. Her weaving of the metaphorical through her work, and the aesthetic she shares with Burke and Murkett, inspired the title of their show, Kozmik Braid.
Gallery hours: 11 a.m. – 5 p.m., Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and by appointment (413) 717-2530
Opening reception on Friday, Aug. 16, from 4 – 7 p.m.
Getsinger’s studio in New Marlborough, Massachusetts, is full of natural light and painter’s tools.Jennifer Almquist
Getsinger’s “Vortex and Orb” and more paintings will be on exhibit.Jennifer Almquist
Join The Lakeville Journal for a community celebration, featuring local nonprofits and businesses, festive family fun, great food, and engaging activities.
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See you at the Lakeville Journal Street Fair!
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Cobbler n’ Cream
5 to 7 p.m.
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Canaan Carnival
6 to 10 p.m.
Bunny McGuire Park
Canaan Carnival
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Bunny McGuire Park
Cocktail Party
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Douglas Library | 108 Main St.
Canaan Carnival
6 to 10 p.m.
Bunny McGuire Park
Boot Drive
8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
North Canaan Fire Co. | 4 E. Main St.
3rd Annual Fly-In
8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Triumph Airfield | 547 W. Main St.
Canaan Railroad Station Museum
10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
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New England Accordion Connection
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Canaan Union Station
Canaan Carnival
3 to 10 p.m.
Bunny McGuire Park
Berkshire Resilience Brass Band
5 to 8 p.m.
Canaan Union Station
Barbecued Chicken Dinner
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St. Martin of Tours | 4 Main St.
Canaan Fireman’s parade
6 p.m.
Rosa setigera is a native climbing rose whose simple flowers allow bees to easily collect pollen.
After moving to West Cornwall in 2012, we were given a thoughtful housewarming gift: the 1997 edition of “Dirr’s Hardy Trees and Shrubs.” We were told the encyclopedic volume was the definitive gardener’s reference guide — a fact I already knew, having purchased one several months earlier at the recommendation of a gardener I admire.
At the time, we were in the thick of winter invasive removal, and I enjoyed reading and dreaming about the trees and shrubs I could plant to fill in the bare spots where the bittersweet, barberry, multiflora rose and other invasive plants had been.Years later, I purchased the 2011 edition, updated and inclusive of plants for warm climates.
On the cover of the new edition, a quote from Adrian Higgins of The Washington Post boasts, “Michael Dirr is the oracle of ornamental horticulture. I trust his judgements implicitly.”I heartily disagree with Mr. Higgins:I blame this book — and my poor use of it — for some of my worst tree and shrub choices.
I realize some readers might find this declaration inflammatory. The book still occupies a place of high regard among experienced and novice gardeners alike, so please allow me to explain.
In addition to giving the reader his opinion on the aesthetic worthiness of the woody plants included in the book, Mr. Dirr makes good on the book’s title with a review of each species’ hardiness. What makes a tree hardy?It thrives in its intended site, resisting disease with leaves and bark not readily eaten by insects and other critters.
Non-native plants make up the majority of the recommended hardy plants in the book.And here is why:Native trees and shrubs are, by evolution’s design, food source and host to our native fauna — critters large and small. There is no substitute equal to the fauna’s co-evolved flora.A native caterpillar cannot eat a kousa dogwood leaf, as it has not evolved to digest it.Non-native plants seemingly have the advantage if the lens we look through values pristine, uneaten leaves.
In the days when there were sufficient thriving ecosystems to maintain local habitats, a non-native specimen tree here and there was just fine.But where we live in Northwest Connecticut, our woods, meadows, marshes and other natural areas have, for a couple of decades, been severely compromised by invasives that have almost entirely removed the food sources for native insects. It is up to us — now — to plant native plants to save the food chain.Without insects, not only will native animals die, but human food sources will also be at risk.
The security of our food pipeline seems a worthy exchange for some caterpillar-eaten leaves — and to be clear, we’re not talking about non-native infestations such as spongy moth, but rather native caterpillars, which are the singular food source for nesting birds.
My issue is that, in being a trusted source for plant selection, Dirr’s book should give equal — if not prioritized — space to information on ecological impact.For example, it would be good to know when selecting a tree, that a native oak provides food and other ecosystem services to more than 400 native animal species, while a native tulip poplar supports fewer than 30 — though that includes the Eastern tiger swallowtail. Including information on the birds and insects attracted to a given plant would enable reader to weigh these factors in choosing what to grow.But this information is not mentioned at all.
Dirr makes no mention of the role some of these plants have played in the degradation of our natural areas — an omission that is highly relevant, as many of the plants featured in his book are, in fact, invasive culprits. Plants like barberry, porcelain berry and tree of heaven are showcased for consideration alongside native plants without recognition of the devastating infestations they can manifest. Tree of Heaven is now responsible for hosting the spotted lanternfly, which is devastating crops.
Similarly Euonymous alatus (winged euonymous) and Actinidia arguta (hardy kiwi) — two highly invasive plants touted in the book — have been banned or are close to being banned for sale from nurseries in the state of Massachusetts. To his credit, Dirr does point out the invasive nature of Ligustrum sinense (Chinese privet), calling it “a terrible and devastating escapee that terrorizes floodplains, fencerows and even open fields, reducing native vegetation to rubble.” Yet Japanese honeysuckle gets an understated warning, with Dirr describing this massively invasive shrub as “bullying their way into understory and open areas.”
The latest edition of Dirr’s book devotes seven pages of copy and photos to various Berberis species, about which Dirr waxes poetic. He notes the addition of “30 new cultivars” in the latest revision and complains that “this species is under assault for its aggressive invasive nature.” He refers to Berberis thunbergii — Japanese barberry, the most invasive of them all — as “the species of major importance in garden commerce.” This plant has already been outlawed for sale in New York, Pennsylvania, New Hamphsire and Maine.A few weeks ago, a bill was passed in Connecticut recognizing the harm of a broad group of invasive plants. Under this new legislation, barberry will be phased out from sale or transport by October 2028.
In understating the invasive nature of many non-natives and de-prioritizing the importance of native species, Dirr’s widely used reference may be partly responsible for many a devastated woodland, forest, meadow and marsh in New England — if not across the U.S.Certainly, the evolution of species, and scientific knowledge about the environment, is changing faster than new editions of books can be printed. I can only hope that if a new edition of Mr. Dirr’s reference book is in the works that it will account for this criteria we now know to be vital in plant selection.
Which brings me back to that quote on the cover from The Washington Post and the larger issue it suggests:Should “ornamental horticulture” get a pass when it comes to ecological survival?I think we can agree — it should not.The consequences are simply too destructive.
Dee Salomon ‘ungardens’ in Litchfield County.
The late Glenn May on one of his favorite rivers, the San Juan in New Mexico, circa 2010.
My nomadic attorney Thos is planning a fishing and camping trip of major proportions later this summer, starting in New Mexico and working his way north through the Rockies into Canada.
So I wanted to reconnect with a fellow named Glenn May, who was my main fishing buddy for several years in the 1990s when we both lived in Albuquerque and worked at the same bookstore. Last I heard he was living in Colorado, which is on the itinerary, more or less.
An email bounced back so I tried Facebook, only to learn he died in his sleep in February.
He was a little younger than me, about 60 I guess.
This was disconcerting.
I was already working at the bookstore when he came on board, and we recognized our mutual interest when I found him trying to carve out a shelf or two for fly-fishing titles amid the general chaos of the sports section.
I had a Ford Escort, which was good on gas but didn’t hold much gear, especially when you factored in critical supplies such as beer.
He had a gigantic and battered Ford F350 which was terrible on gas but would go anywhere and could hold everything. It also had a long-expired Delaware license plate, which made for some tense moments.
We managed to wangle the same two days off, Sunday and Monday, and we’d often bug out after our Saturday second shift and fetch up somewhere around 1 a.m., pitch a tent and be on the water at dawn.
The bookstore did not pay much, and out West the distances (and gas consumption) are exponentially greater than in the relatively compact East.
If it was near the first of the month, we took the Escort. Mid-month when we were feeling bucks up, we’d go with the truck.
Glenn was a dry fly guy to his core. I had been trained in similar fashion but was dabbling in the dark arts of subsurface fishing, so when one of us was catching the other was often fishing.
He was also a Dallas Cowboys fan. They were suffering through a particularly bad season one year in the mid-90s, and as we drove from river to river we listened to the games on the radio. He lamented, and I privately gloated.
I wandered back east but Glenn stayed put, eventually becoming a fairly big name in the New Mexico newspaper world. He wrote about fly-fishing for the Albuquerque Tribune and about everything for the Santa Fe New Mexican, and that’s not a complete list.
Then he was off to Cameroon with the Peace Corps. And then Turkey, not in the Peace Corps. He did a stint teaching English in South Korea.
I occasionally got cryptic emails describing the fishing in places like Bulgaria, and he kept up a Facebook presence, so I had some idea of what he was doing.
More recently he was back in the Four Corners, working for the Ute tribal nation in some capacity. I think there was a wife in there too.
I’m struck — again — by how, over the years,I have spent a lot of time with fishing friends and I know next to nothing about them except they dislike fishing with dropper rigs and have a weakness for hazelnut coffee.
The other thing that stands out about Glenn was that he was the best trout spotter I have ever fished with. No scouting flies for this guy. He was almost always aiming at specific fish, where I was working specific spots. To use a sports analogy, he played man-to-man while I played zone.
I spoke to him on the phone in 2004. We reminisced about the time we were edging around a canyon pool and when he looked back all he saw was my ballcap floating on the surface. (I was underneath temporarily.)
Or the time the drunk idiots chucked rocks into the pools we were working. They were poor shots so the rocks came very close to hitting us. They also called our fly rods “fairy sticks.”
We snuck up on them later when they were cavorting in a hot spring and let the air out one of their tires. Only one. We wanted the punishment to fit the crime.
They recovered enough that we encountered them later at a rustic saloon that sold flies and had a collection of brassieres attached to the ceiling. Luckily they didn’t put two and two together, probably because they were engrossed by the decor. We prudently oiled out and made our escape.
I’ll wrap this with a story about the famous New Mexico tailwater, the San Juan River.
The first time we tried it together he was doing well with miniscule dry flies, size 24 callibaetis, and long leaders tapered to 7X.
I think this was when my antipathy for what I call “specks” started. No matter what, I could not lay out my speck the way he could.
So while he was horsing big fat rainbows into the net, I was fumbling with tackle and cussing.
Finally, I tied on a big gaudy Royal Coachman fly with a pink post and about twice the normal amount of hackle. I think I bought it at the brassiere bar.
Shortening my leader to something around seven feet and 3X, I heaved it near the streamside vegetation while Glenn watched. He may have smirked a bit.
A nice rainbow, probably rejoicing at the prospect of a square meal instead of nibbling on specks, smacked the ridiculous fly and we were off.
It was big enough, and I had consumed enough beer, that Glenn kindly assisted in netting the beast. He looked at it, the fly and at me, shook his head, and said “Now that is some raggedy fly-fishing.”